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III 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •   BOMBAY    •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

lOEONTO 


THE  HISTORY 

OF 

EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

AN  INTRODUCTORY  BOOK 


BY 

WALTER  T.  MARVIN 


Nrm  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 

AU  rights  reserved 


COPTRIOHT,    1917 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  May,  1917. 


HOWARD  CROSBY  WARREN 


1333100 


PREFACE 

The  purpose  I  have  had  in  mind  to  fulfill  in  writing 
this  book  has  been  solely  pedagogical.  I  have  not  en- 
deavored to  add  anything  whatever  to  our  knowledge 
of  the  history  of  philosophy,  and  if  by  chance  I  have  any- 
where offered  new  points  of  view,  this  has  been  quite 
subordinate  to  my  main  purpose.  On  the  contrary,  I 
have  in  several  chapters  deliberately  depended  upon  one 
selected  secondary  source  and  in  a  few  chapters  I  have 
ventured  even  to  quote  my  secondary  authority  at  length. 
(I  have  indicated  this  indebtedness  wherever  I  have 
thought  it  of  any  importance  to  the  reader  to  do  so.) 

Two  pedagogical  considerations  have  determined  the 
character  of  the  book.  First,  my  experience  is,  that  the 
traditional  and  conventional  text-book  on  the  history  of 
philosophy,  however  excellent  and  scholarly,  is  not  well 
adapted  to  the  needs  of  undergraduate  students.  Such  a 
book  is  an  epitome  of  the  doctrines  of  the  great  philosoph- 
ical thinkers,  and  is  both  unintelligible  to  the  beginner  and 
too  detailed  to  be  learned  and  remembered  by  him.  It 
attempts  to  make  the  student  acquainted  with  the  diffi- 
cult and  detailed  doctrines  and  reasonings  of  the  philoso- 
phers when  only  a  long  and  careful  study  of  their  writings 
can  really  bring  this  about.  Moreover,  it  fails  by  not 
relating  the  information  it  gives  to  the  other  historical 
information  prerequisite  to  the  study  of  the  history  of 
philosophy,  and  thus  it  forms,  if  learned,  a  sort  of  logic- 
tight  compartment  with  no  openings  into  the  fields  of 
psychology  and  anthropology,  of  general  poHtical,  social 
and  economic  history,  and  of  the  history  of  Hterature, 

vii 


VUl  PREFACE 

art,  and  general  culture.  It  ignores  the  fact  that  the 
philosophy  of  any  period  or  age  is  the  outcome  of  the 
total  civiHzation  and  of  the  changing  civilization  of  the 
time.  Hence  to  avoid  these  errors,  I  have  tried  to  con- 
fine my  book  to  major  philosophical  movements  and 
to  approach  the  study  of  any  philosophical  movement 
from  the  general  history  of  the  era,  and  I  have  tried  to 
indicate  the  relations  between  the  philosophy  of  the  age 
and  the  other  great  spiritual  and  social  changes  that 
were  taking  place.  Second,  a  beginner's  text-book  on 
the  history  of  philosophy,  in  my  opinion,  should  include 
as  few  details  as  possible,  should  leave  much  to  be  taught 
directly  by  the  instructor  in  charge  of  the  course,  and 
should  presuppose  that  the  student  is  to  do  a  large  amount 
of  outside  reading.  To  make  this  reading  possible  the 
text-book  must  be  brief  and  concise,  and  must  resemble 
in  its  character  a  syllabus.  However,  it  may  properly 
include  more  topics  than  the  student  will  have  time  to 
study  at  length,  so  that  the  instructor  may  select  from 
the  list  the  topics  most  suitable  to  the  needs  and  interests 
of  the  individual  student. 

The  readings  I  have  suggested  are  merely  suggestions, 
though  serious  ones.    They  are  not  bibliographies. 

Walter  T.  Marvin. 
Rutgers  College, 

March  24th,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I— INTRODUCTORY 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Recency  of  Civilization 1 

1.  The  relative  recency  of  civilization.  2.  The 
causes  of  the  rise  and  growth  of  civilization.  3.  The 
primitive  beliefs  and  customs  the  source  of  the  later 
civilization.  4.  The  survival  of  the  primitive  within 
civilization.    5.  Conclusion. 

II.  The  History  of  Philosophy 12 

1.  The  history  of  the  growth  of  knowledge.  2.  The 
meaning  of  the  term,  philosophy.  3.  Philosophical 
growth  and  its  causes.    4.  The  program  of  this  book. 

III.  Changes  in  Man's  Mental  Nature  Wrought  by 

Civilization 20 

1.  Introductory.  2.  Learning  by  imitation.  3.  The 
broadening  of  curiosity.  4.  Increase  of  the  ability  to 
analyze.  5.  Man  becomes  less  crudely  emotional 
6.  Man  becomes  less  crudely  suggestible.  7.  Man 
becomes  more  sociable.    8.  Conclusion. 

IV.  Primitive  Knowledge  and  Thought 31 

1.  Primitive  thought.  2.  Three  kinds  of  beliefs 
held  by  the  primitive  thinker.  3.  Primitive  verified 
knowledge.  4.  Primitive  speculative  knowledge. 
5.  The  influence  of  social  organization.  6.  Con- 
clusion. 

V.  From  Primitive  Thought  to  Science 49 

1.  Introductory.  2.  Primitive  custom  and  reli- 
gion. 3.  National  and  international  religions.  4. 
From  religion  to  science.  5.  The  conflict  of  science 
with  religion.  6.  The  mutual  influence  of  religion 
and  science. 


X  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI.  The  Two  Major  Periods  in  the  History  of  Euro- 
pean Philosophy 59 

1.  The  three  major  periods  of  history.  2.  The  first 
coming  of  science.  3.  The  major  periods  in  the  de- 
velopment of  scientific  thought. 

PART  II— ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY 

VII.  The  Mediterranean  Period 67 

1.  Greek  science  and  philosophy.  2.  The  periods 
of  Greco-Roman  science. 

VIII.  From  Religion  to  Science  in  Greece 71 

1.  Greek  religion.  2.  Greek  theology.  3.  The 
influence  of  Greek  theology  upon  Greek  science. 
4.  The  two  currents  in  Greek  philosophy.  5.  Intel- 
lectualistic  naturalism  and  romanticism  have  re- 
mained rivals  throughout  the  history  of  European 
philosophy. 

IX.  The  Early  Period 78 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  important  discoveries 
known  to  have  been  made  in  the  early  period  of 
Greek  science.  3.  The  eastern,  or  Ionic  philosophical 
tradition.  4.  The  western,  or  Italic  philosophical 
tradition. 

X.  The  Atomic  Theory 95 

1.  Important  stages  in  the  evolution  of  early  cos- 
mology toward  atomism.  2.  The  atomic  theory. 
3.  Conclusion. 

XI.  The  Athenian  Period 109 

1.  The  major  political  changes  in  the  Athenian 
period.  2.  Athens  the  center  of  greatest  Greek  cul- 
ture. 3.  The  age  of  enhghtenment.  4.  The  field  of 
the  enlightenment.  5.  The  new  fields  of  scientific 
development.  6.  Scientific  progress  along  the  older 
lines.  7.  The  major  philosophical  problems  of  the 
Athenian  period. 
XII.  The  Great  Thinkers  of  the  Athenian  Period: 

Protagoras  and  Democritus 120 

1.  Protagoras.    2.  Democritus. 


CONTENTS  Xi 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIII.  The  Great  Thinkers  of  the  Athenian  Period: 

Socrates  and  Plato 132 

1.  Socrates.  2.  The  Socratic  doctrine  of  forms,  or 
ideas.  3.  The  Socratic  doctrine  of  the  nature  of  the 
good.  4.  Plato.  5.  Plato's  contribution  to  science. 
6.  The  Platonic  philosophy.  7.  Plato's  defense  of 
science  against  the  Eleatics  of  Megara.  8.  In  Plato's 
philosophy  mathematics  is  the  fundamental  science. 
9.  The  world-soul.    10.  Plato's  cosmology. 

XIV.  The  Great  Thinkers  of  the  Athenian  Period: 

Aristotle 150 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  relation  of  the  philosophy 
of  Aristotle  to  that  of  Plato  and  Democritus.  3.  Aris- 
totle the  Platonist.  4.  Aristotle  the  vitalist.  5.  The 
Aristotelian  cosmology.  6.  Aristotle's  philosophy  of 
life. 

XV.  The  Hellenistic  and  Roman  Periods 164 

1.  Introductory.      2.  Religion.      3.  Philosophy. 
4.  Scientific  progress. 

XVI.  The  Philosophical  Schools 185 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  philosophical  schools  of 
the  Hellenistic  and  Roman  periods.  3.  The  Epi- 
curean school.    4.  The  Stoic  school.   5.  Neoplatonism. 

XVII.  The  Roman  Law 211 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  entrance  of  Hellenic  cul- 
ture into  Rome.  3.  The  development  of  the  Roman 
private  law.    4.  The  jus  naturale. 

XVIII.  The  Christian  Philosophy 223 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  development  of  Chris- 
tian philosophy.  3.  Augustine.  4.  Gregory  the 
Great.    5.  Conclusion. 

PART  III— MODERN  PHILOSOPHY 

XIX.  The  Atlantic  Period 243 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  development  of  medieval 
and  modem  culture.  3.  The  culture  of  the  Atlantic 
period  contrasted  with  that  of  the  Mediterranean 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

period.  4.  Ancient  philosophy  contrasted  with 
modern  philosophy. 

XX.  Medieval  Thought 250 

1.  The  medieval  mind.  2.  The  three  factors  at 
work  in  medieval  thought.  3.  The  course  through 
which  medieval  thought  developed.  4.  The  content 
of  medieval  philosophic  thought. 

XXI.  The  Age  op  Discovery 275 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  factors  giving  rise  to  the 
age  of  discovery.  3.  The  course  of  discovery  and  the 
great  discoveries.  4.  The  broadening  of  the  field  of 
discovery  and  of  science.  5.  The  conflict  of  science 
with  prescientific  and  medieval  belief  and  cus- 
tom. 
XXII.  The  Modern  Philosophical  Movements 301 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  survival  of  prescientific 
thought.     3.  The  modern  philosophical  movements. 

4.  The  course  of  modern  philosophical  movements 
and  the  philosophical  tendencies  of  the  nineteenth 
and  twentieth  centuries. 

XXIII.  Rationalism  and  Naturalism 314 

1.  The  problem  of  method.  2.  Naturalism:  The 
universe  conceived  as  a  perpetual  motion  machine. 
3.  Rationalism  and  naturahsm  in  religion.  4.  Ra- 
tionaUsm  and  naturahsm  in  physiology.  5.  Ra- 
tionaUsm  and  naturalism  in  psychology.  6.  Ration- 
ahsm  and  naturahsm  in  social  and  moral  science. 

7.  The  development  of  toleration.  8.  The  idea  of 
progress.  9.  The  effect  of  naturalism  upon  the  gen- 
eral intellectual  fife  of  the  modern  world. 

XXIV.  Phenomenalism,  Positivism,  and  Idealism 341 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  terms,  PhenomenaUsm 
and  Empiricism  defined.  3.  PhenomenaUsm  and 
Ideahsm.      4.  PhenomenaUsm   in   modem   thought. 

5.  The  subjectivistic  problem  of  knowledge.  6.  Em- 
piricism   and    positivism.       7.   Objective    ideahsm. 

8.  The  influence  of  phenomenalism  and  positivism 
upon  the  intellectual  life  of  the  past  two  centuries. 


CONTENTS 


Xlll 


CHAPTER 

XXV 


PAGE 

359 


The  Doctrine  of  Evolution 

1.  Introductory.  2.  Geological  and  biological 
evolution.      3.  The    doctrine   of    natural    selection. 

4.  Evolution  as  a  part  of  the  philosophy  of  the  intel- 
lectual world.  5.  The  influence  of  evolution  upon  the 
general  trend  of  present  philosophical  thought. 

XXVI.  Romanticism 369 

1.  Introductory.  2.  Romanticism  as  a  philosoph- 
ical movement.  3.  Romanticism  as  a  philosophical 
doctrine.  4.  Romanticism  and  science.  5.  Roman- 
ticism and  primitive  thought.  6.  The  influence  of 
romanticism  upon  the  thought  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

XXVII.  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies 384 

1.  Introductory.  2.  The  scientific  achievement  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  3.  The  great  discoveries  of 
marked   philosophical   importance.     4.  Naturalism. 

5.  Rationalism  and  experimentalism.  6.  Intellec- 
tualism  and  pragmatism.  7.  The  new  realism. 
8.  Social  democracy. 

XXVIII.  Conclusion 429 

1.  The  complexity  of  our  present  intellectual  hfe. 
2.  The  central  tendency  man  of  to-day  and  the  cen- 
tral tendency  man  of  the  intellectual  class.  3.  The 
near  future  of  present  philosophical  tendencies.  4. 
The  individual  and  the  group  mind.  5.  The  two  as- 
pects of  man's  intellectual  progress. 


PART  I 
INTRODUCTORY 


THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN 
PHILOSOPHY 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   RECENCY   OF   CIVILIZATION 

1.  The  relative  recency  of  civilization. — Man  has  not 

always  been  the  man  we  now  behold.  Man  sprang  from 
a  brute  ancestry  and  took  many  tens  of  thousands  of  years 
to  reach  the  level  of  civilization  found  at  the  beginning  of 
what  we  usually  call  history,  that  is,  the  level  attained 
four  thousand  years  before  Christ  in  the  lands  bordering 
upon  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  Even  the  beginnings  of 
Egyptian,  Sumerian  and  Babylonian  civilization  seem  but 
of  yesterday,  if  their  recency  is  compared  with  the  remote- 
ness of  the  time  when  man  first  used  the  rudest  stone  tools. 
Moreover,  from  the  dawn  of  history  to  our  own  day, 
durmg  this  period  of  less  than  ten  thousand  years,  parts 
of  the  human  race  have  developed  not  only  relatively  but 
also  absolutely  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  man  developed 
during  the  preceding  one  hundred  thousand  years.  The 
three  familiar  and  wonderful  examples  of  this  rapidly 
developing  civilization  in  the  western  world  have  been  the 
three  thousand  years  of  ancient  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia 
preceding  the  Christian  era,  the  twelve  hundred  years  of 
Greco-Roman  history  from  800  B.  C.  to  400  A.  D.  and  the 
seven  hundred  years  of  modern  Europe  from  the  beginning 
of  the  thirteenth  century  to  the  present  time. 

1 


2  THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  further  study  read: 

Robinson,  J.  H.,  The  New  History,  1911,  236-266; 
Marett,  R.  R.,  Anthropology  (Home  University  Library); 
Clodd,  E.,  The  Story  of  Primitive  Man,  1910; 
Ratzel,  The  History  of  Mankind,  1896,  Book  I. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Osborn,  H.  F.,  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age,  1915; 

SoUas,  Ancient  Hunters  and  their  Modern  Representatives, 
1915; 

Buttel-Reepen,  Man  and  his  Forerunners,  1913; 

Keith,  A.,  Antiquity  of  Man,  1915; 

Meyer,  E.,  Gescliichte  des  Altertums,  3te.  Aufl.,  1910,  Bd. 
I,  Erste  Halfte; 

MacCurdy,  G.  G.,  Recent  Discoveries  Bearing  on  the  An- 
tiquity of  Man,  1910  (from  Smithsonian  Report  of  1909); 

Haddon,  A.  C,  History  of  Anthropology,  1910. 

2.  The  causes  of  the  rise  and  growth  of  civilization: 
(a)  The  further  evolution  of  man's  brain. — Psychology 
limits  the  possible  causes  at  vi^ork  in  evolving  civilization 
to  two  distinct  types.  First,  man's  inborn  mental  na- 
ture, the  nervous  system  given  him  by  heredity,  may  have 
been  improving.  Second,  man's  environment,  that  is,  the 
sum  total  of  the  factors  acting  upon  this  inborn  nature, 
may  have  become  more  and  more  favorable  to  further 
civilization.  If  the  first  cause  has  been  present,  man's 
progress  can  be  explained  in  the  same  way  as  can  man's 
superiority  to  the  brute.  That  is  to  say,  we  can  argue  that 
precisely  as  the  brain  of  prehistoric  man  had  evolved  to  a 
higher  type  than  that  possessed  by  his  prehuman  ancestor; 
so  man's  brain  has  continued  to  evolve  to  a  higher  and 
higher  type,  with  the  result  that  the  European  has  a  better 
brain  to-day  than  had  the  European  six  thousand  years 
ago.  To  repeat,  if  such  an  evolution  has  indeed  taken  place, 
it  would  explain  man's  recent  progress  in  civilization;  for 
it  would  give  the  modern  a  superior  intellect,  or  capacity 


THE  RECENCY  OF  CIVILIZATION  3 

for  civilization,  to  that  of  prehistoric  man,  precisely  as  the 
earlier  neural  evolution  gave  to  prehistoric  man  an  intellect 
superior  to  that  of  the  beasts  whom  he  hunted,  not  by  his 
greater  strength  or  speed,  but  by  his  manual  dexterity, 
his  weapons  and  his  strategy.  However,  we  may  not  ac- 
cept this  possible  cause ;  for  all  the  evidence  that  we  as  yet 
have  from  historian,  anthropologist,  and  psychologist, 
indicates  no  important  advance  in  the  inborn  structure  of 
the  human  brain  during  the  past  six  thousand  years,  and 
certainly  no  advance  comparable  to  that  which  must  have 
taken  place  in  our  race's  evolution  remote  ages  ago.  Per- 
haps the  most  that  can  be  maintained  in  favor  of  the 
belief  that  man's  inborn  nature  has  improved,  is  that  nat- 
ural selection  may  have  tended  to  weed  out  the  feebler 
intellects,  may  have  favored  the  better  intellects,  and 
thereby  may  have  raised  slightly  not  the  best  but  the 
average  intellect. 

(b)  The  influence  of  the  environment. — Be  this  as  it 
may,  the  second  possible  cause,  namely,  the  environment, 
has  Ijeen  by  far  the  more  potent  factor;  for  the  evidence 
we  have,  indicates  that  environment  has  been  not  only 
an  indispensable  but  also  a  sufficient  cause  of  human 
progress.  Expressed  in  briefest  and  baldest  form,  the 
invention  of  tools  and  of  arts  has  increased  the  food  supply, 
this  has  increased  the  population,  and  the  last  has  increased 
socialization  and  civilization.  Once  in  existence,  a  little 
civiHzation  can  by  the  same  process  beget  further  civili- 
zation and  an  increased  civiUzation  can  beget  a  higher  and 
higher  civilization  at  a  rate  comparable  to  a  geometrical 
progression.  A  stimulating  and  favorable  climate,  a  good 
geographical  habitat,  natural  wealth  in  food,  in  wood,  and 
in  minerals,  more  efficient  instruments  for  tillage,  for 
transportation,  for  building,  and  for  the  various  industries, 
a  denser  population,  an  increased  socialization,  a  more 
efficient  language,  a  wider  acquaintance  with  other  lands, 


4  THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

their  people,  and  their  customs,  a  nobler  architecture 
and  nobler  plastic  arts,  a  richer  industrial,  biographical, 
social,  and  artistic  tradition,  and  a  written  lore,  have  each 
and  all  been  either  contributing  or  indispensable  causes 
for  the  continued  growth  of  civilization.  Many  of  them 
have  been  stimuli  that  excite  curiosity,  that  suggest  prob- 
lems, and  that  arouse  novel  thoughts  and  other  new  ways 
of  reacting.  Moreover,  such  a  growth  in  civilization  pro- 
vides more  and  more  the  indispensable  tolerance  and  re- 
ward for  inventiveness,  for  analytical  thought,  and  for 
critical  reflection.  Soon  it  provides  also  as  stimuli  the 
deeds  and  thoughts  of  great  men,  stimuH  which  excite 
younger  men  to  study,  to  imitate,  and  to  criticise  the  arts, 
the  customs,  and  the  doctrines  of  their  elders.  Thus  the 
very  enterprise  of  progress  becomes  itself  a  tradition  and 
a  profession.  Finally,  from  the  very  beginning,  civiUza- 
tion  tends  to  become  an  international  possession  and 
nations  tend  to  contribute  mutually  to  further  progress; 
for  in  the  early  stages  of  civiUzation  as  well  as  in  the  later, 
beliefs  and  customs  tend  to  spread,  carried  by  the  trader, 
the  traveller,  and  the  warrior. 

However,  a  word  of  caution  must  be  added  to  this  story 
of  the  influence  of  environment  upon  civilization.  Civili- 
zation does  not  always  beget  higher  civilization.  Civiliza- 
tion can  remain  stationary,  it  can  decline  back  even  into 
savagedom.  Civilized  environments  are  exceeding  complex 
and  are  never  alike  in  different  times  and  in  different  places ; 
and  unfortunately  some  of  the  greatest  or  most  rapid 
advances  in  civilization  seem  to  have  been  dependent 
upon  some  quite  exceptional  combination  of  environmental 
factors,  since  often  in  man's  history  these  most  rapid 
advances  have  persisted  for  but  relatively  short  periods. 

(c)  The  influence  of  the  exceptional  man. — The  pres- 
ence of  a  subordinate  psychological  factor  indispensable 
to  the  growth  of  civilization  should  be  noted  in  addition 


THE  RECENCY  OF  CIVILIZATION  5 

to  the  two  ultimate  factors,  change  in  inborn  nature  and 
environment.  This  factor  is  the  man  of  exceptionally  high 
abihty.  Could  we  see  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  in- 
ventions and  novel  thoughts  and  deeds  actually  in  the  mak- 
ing, the  thousands  of  individual  acts  that  have  been  the 
most  important  events  in  history,  whom  should  we  see  to 
have  been  their  true  authors?  From  what  we  know  regard- 
ing some  of  these  events  which  the  historian  has  been  able 
to  examine  in  detail,  and  from  what  is  psychologically 
most  probable,  we  can  infer  that  the  true  authors  were  in 
most  instances  men  above  the  average  abihty  of  their 
horde,  tribe,  or  nation.  To  guess  what  the  history  of 
Europe  would  have  been,  had  this  or  that  man  of  genius 
not  been  born,  may  be  utterly  idle;  but  it  is  not  venture- 
some to  assert  that  our  civihzation  would  never  have 
arisen,  had  some  superhuman  agent  destroyed  in  each 
generation  all  the  children  whose  inborn  mental  nature 
ranked  among  the  highest  ten  per  cent  in  excellence.  If 
this  is  true,  then  the  following  propositions  are  of  great 
importance  in  the  study  of  history.  First,  the  denser  the 
population  the  greater  will  be  the  absolute  number  of  these 
exceptional  children  and  the  higher  will  be  the  probabihty 
that  among  them  are  some  children  of  quite  extraordinary 
ability.  In  other  words,  though  the  average  inborn  mental 
nature  may  not  have  improved  in  the  course  of  the  past 
six  thousand  years,  the  inborn  nature  can  be  said  to  have 
improved  absolutely  wherever  population  has  greatly  in- 
creased in  number.  And  such  an  increase  is  typical  of 
advancing  civilization.  Second,  psychology  shows  that  en- 
vironment brings  about  far  greater  and  far  more  desirable 
changes  in  the  mental  nature  of  the  exceptionally  capable 
child  than  in  that  of  his  mediocre  companion.  That  is,  he 
is  more  easily  civilized.  Third,  the  exceptionally  capable 
men  are  as  a  type  far  more  masterful  and  inventive  than 
the  mediocre,  and  therefore  they  are  to  a  greater  degree 


6  THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

makers  of  their  environment,  to  a  less  degree  dependent 
upon  favorable  environment,  and  in  general  they  are  the 
probable  human  authors  of  progress.^ 

(d)  The  causes  of  the  slowness  of  progress  in  prim- 
itive civilization. — Such  being  the  causes  of  the  growth 
of  civilization,  why  were  the  earliest  stages  of  primitive 
culture  so  very  long?  This  problem  is  for  the  most  part 
psychological  and,  if  so  studied,  is  easily  solved.  The 
first  tools  must  have  been  the  objects  that  untutored  man 
would  pick  up  and  use  instinctively,  such  as  sticks  and 
stones.  However,  that  a  stone  could  be  fastened  to  a 
stick,  was  as  far  beyond  this  wild  man's  dreams  as  was  the 
electric  locomotive;  and  of  course  that  a  stone  could  be 
chipped  or  polished  into  useful  shapes  never  entered  his 
thoughts.  Such  habits  must  have  had  several  stages  and 
each  of  these  stages  doubtless  had  to  wait  for  some  happy 
accident  to  occur  among  man's  animal-like  and  quite  un- 
reflective  experiments.  Indeed,  to  expect  them  to  occur 
as  reflective  inventions  rather  than  as  lucky  accidents 
would  be  as  absurd  as  to  expect  the  baby  to  begin  his 
mathematical  thinking  with  the  notions  of  the  calculus. 
We  should  recall  that  it  is  quite  impossible  for  us  to  imag- 
ine or  to  thmk  about  objects  that  lie  altogether  beyond 
our  experience,  for  example,  for  an  infant  to  think  about 
bacteria  or  for  a  savage  to  invent  an  automobile.  Think- 
ing always  presupposes  knowledge.  Therefore  the  be- 
ginnings of  culture  had  to  be  unreflective  or  quite  acci- 
dental. Moreover,  if  this  conclusion  is  probable  of  such 
simple  habits  as  fastening  a  stone  to  a  stick,  how  much  the 

^  I  say  "human  authors  of  progress,"  for  we  must  not  forget  that 
even  the  most  gifted  of  men  but  shares  in  this  authorship  with  his 
environment.  Without  a  favorable  environment  to  stimulate  him 
he  would  not  invent  or  progress  and  without  such  an  environment 
to  reward  and  to  foster  his  enterprises  they  would  die  in  their  very 
beginnings. 


THE  RECENCY  OF  CIVILIZATION  7 

more  should  we  expect  that  only  the  happiest  and  most 
infrequent  of  accidents  could  have  led  to  the  discovery  of 
such  processes  as  the  making  of  fire,  the  tilling  of  the  soil, 
the  making  of  pottery,  and  the  working  of  copper  and  iron! 

3.  The  primitive  beliefs  and  customs  the  source  of 
the  later  civilization. — Precisely  as  man's  body  has 
evolved  out  of  the  body  of  his  anthropoid  ancestor  and 
precisely  as  human  instincts  have  grown  out  of  the  in- 
stincts of  the  early  primates;  so  also  has  the  civilization 
that  we  study  in  history  evolved  from  the  primitive  cus- 
toms of  prehistory.  Moreover,  there  follows  the  im- 
portant corollary:  a  people's  culture,  as  found  by  the  his- 
torian, cannot  be  understood  by  him  until  he  discovers 
the  primitive  beliefs  and  customs  from  which  that  culture 
evolved.  Nowadays  this  principle  seems  to  us  almost  a 
truism;  for  with  our  evolutionary  habits  of  thought  we 
cannot  see  how  history  can  be  studied  otherwise. 

During  the  period  of  recorded  history  the  fact  of  evolu- 
tion is  evident.  Civil  law  and  political  institutions,  in- 
dustrial, commercial  and  banking  customs,  methods  of 
transportation  and  numberless  machines  have  evolved  by 
stages  that  are  known  in  detail;  and  some  of  these  stages 
have  been  gone  through  almost  before  our  very  eyes.  And 
if  the  new  has  grown  out  of  the  old  when  progress  has 
been  so  largely  the  result  of  reflective  thought,  how  surely 
must  it  have  so  grown  in  the  early  days  of  history!  The 
evidence  that  it  did  so  is  abundant.  The  anthropologists 
and  the  students  of  the  dawn  of  history  are  revealing  to 
us  everjrwhere  the  growth  of  early  civilization  out  of 
primitive  culture,  for  example,  in  the  political  and  social 
organization  of  peoples,  in  their  religion  and  speculations, 
in  their  buildings,  and  in  their  tools  and  industries.  Even 
such  sciences  as  medicine,  chemistry,  astronomy,  and 
history  grew  directly  from  primitive  magic  and  myths. 

Let  us  consider  a  few  familiar  instances.     The  Greek 


8  THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tragedy  grew  out  of  religious  ritual  and  songs  and  retained 
even  in  the  days  of  its  greatest  glory  its  thoroughly  reli- 
gious character.  The  epic  is  evidently  the  outgrowth  of 
the  songs  or  ballads  chanted  or  recited  by  the  bards.  In 
the  ancient  religions  of  the  Mediterranean  world  the 
sacrifices  and  the  sacraments  grew  directly  from  the  savage 
practices  of  totemism  or  similar  customs.  The  fast  and 
other  holy  days  are  the  offspring  of  earlier  savage  tabooes. 
The  prayers  are  later  stages  of  the  magic  words  by  which 
the  seer  compelled  the  totem  or  other  power  to  obey  him ; 
and  some  gods  at  least  are  the  descendants  of  totems 
worshipped  by  earlier  generations.  The  domestication  of 
animals  probably  goes  back  to  the  customs  of  caring  for 
the  totem  or  sacred  animal.  The  beginnings  of  the  study 
of  the  stars  and  of  theories  that  we  may  call  the  first 
astronomy  grew  out  of  early  magic  and  related  religious 
customs  of  which  astrology  is  another  descendant.  The 
beginnings  of  what  may  be  rightly  called  medical  science 
developed  out  of  the  practices  of  the  magician  or  medicine 
man;  and  modern  chemistry  is  the  offspring  of  medieval 
alchemy.  The  ancestry  of  Roman  and  English  civil  law 
is  to  be  found  in  the  customs  of  these  peoples  in  earlier 
generations.  Finally,  the  political  and  social  organization 
of  ancient  Rome  or  of  any  other  great  nation,  ancient  or 
modern,  goes  back  to  the  tribal  customs  of  their  ancestors; 
and  those  differences  between  nations  in  their  political 
and  social  organization  which  even  revolutions  and  cen- 
turies of  intercourse  cannot  eradicate  often  go  back  to 
ancestral  customs  older  than  the  nation  itself.  The 
solidly  practical  and  efficient  management  of  the  Roman 
government  as  compared  with  that  of  the  typical  Greek 
governments  is  an  example  of  such  a  difference.  "  We  can 
see  this  peculiar  gift  showing  itself  at  all  stages  of  their  (Ro- 
man) development:  in  the  agricultural  family  which  was 
the  germ  of  all  their  later  growth,  in  the  city-state  which 


THE  RECENCY  OF  CIVILIZATION  9 

grew  from  that  germ,  and  in  the  Empire,  founded  by  the 
leaders  of  the  city-state,  and  organized  by  Augustus  and 
his  successors."  ^ 

4.  The  survival  of  the  primitive  within  civilization. — 
A  remarkable  fact  in  the  evolution  of  civilization,  as 
in  all  other  evolution,  is  that  the  old  persists  often  along 
with  the  new.  As  man's  skeleton  remains  to  a  large  extent 
the  skeleton  of  his  quadrupedal  ancestors;  so  also  do  tools, 
customs,  laws,  institutions,  and  behefs  retain  countless 
vestiges  of  the  older  or  even  savage  beginnings  from  which 
they  evolved.  For  example,  the  marriage  ring,  the  rice 
thrown  at  the  departing  bride,  the  gargoyles  on  Gothic 
churches,  the  shaking  of  hands  are  vestiges  of  the  customs 
of  an  immemorial  past.  The  common  law  retains  numerous 
elements  going  back  to  the  customs  of  barbaric  ancestors 
and  the  treatment  of  the  criminal  remains  still  partly 
barbaric.  Church  and  college  are  especially  rich  in  ves- 
tiges of  great  antiquity.  Among  our  beliefs,  even  in  the 
most  cultured  circles,  remain  to  this  day  many  stupid 
fears  or  superstitions.  Finally  in  science  as  well  vestiges 
of  savage  beliefs  are  not  difficult  to  find.  Psychology  and 
biology  still  retain  many  remnants  of  the  animism,  or 
demon  theory  of  prunitive  peoples.  For  many  the  mind 
and  its  faculties  are  a  sort  of  jack-in-the-box  that  does 
things  and  needs  not  itself  to  be  explained.  A  similar 
vestige  of  the  day  when  nature  was  thought  of  as  full 
of  demons,  spooks,  and  other  living  agents  is  to  be  found 
in  the  notion,  "force,"  as  entertained  by  physicists  in  re- 
cent centuries. 

However,  the  most  extensive  survival  of  primitive 
beliefs  and  customs  is  to  be  found  in  what  we  may  call  the 
humbler  strata  of  civilized  societies.  Precisely,  as  some 
areas  of  the  earth's  surface  reveal  in  the  geological  strata 
that  compose  them  deposits  not  only  of  many  periods  but 
1  Fowler,  Rome,  p.  14. 


10        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

also  of  periods  of  remote  geological  ages;  so  civilized  society- 
reveals  in  the  groups  of  people  that  compose  it,  from  the 
most  ignorant  to  the  most  cultured,  the  survival  of  differ- 
ent levels  of  civilization.  In  lands  that  are  least  progres- 
sive, in  remote  and  lonely  districts,  among  the  lowest 
peasantry,  fisher  folk  and  sailors  and  in  the  slums  of  our 
great  cities  we  are  likely  to  find  prevalent  many  beliefs  and 
customs  of  the  distant  past.  Here  the  religion,  the  supersti- 
tions, the  medical  practice,  and  the  beliefs  regarding  the 
growth  of  plants  and  animals,  regarding  life  and  mind,  and 
regarding  the  processes  of  nature  about  us  and  above  us 
are  often  not  only  as  crude  as  that  of  barbarians  but  also 
as  ancient. 

If  all  of  this  is  true,  the  student  of  history  is  to  seek  and 
to  expect  to  find  everywhere  within  the  beliefs  and  customs 
which  make  up  the  culture  of  any  land  or  age,  older  and 
even  primitive  beliefs  and  customs,  which  have  come  from 
the  ancestral  culture  of  that  land  or  age.  For  example,  the 
religion  of  the  golden  age  of  Greece,  as  students  of  Greek  re- 
ligion are  to-day  pointing  out,  contains  numerous  vestiges 
of  the  savage  religion  of  a  vastly  older  culture.  And  what 
is  true  of  the  religion  of  Greece  is  true  of  all  ancient  reli- 
gions. And  what  is  true  of  these  religions  is  in  a  greater 
or  less  degree  true  of  everything  else  in  ancient  and  modern 
history.  Thus  you  and  I  still  speak  habitually  of  the  sun 
rising  and  setting,  and  during  nine  hundred  and  ninety- 
nine  moments  out  of  a  thousand  the  earth  beneath  us  is 
unreflectively  regarded  as  the  motionless  bottom  of  the 
universe.  In  other  words,  the  culture  of  any  age  or  land 
is  not  one  thing,  rather  it  is  a  multitude  or  vast  collection 
of  habits,  among  which  some  may  be  new  but  others  are 
older  and  some  may  be  even  prehistoric.  As  the  culture 
changes  only  part  of  the  collection  of  habits  is  altered. 
That  is,  new  habits  are  added  and  only  some  of  the  older 
habits  die  out  in  competition  with  the  new  ones;  whereas 


THE  RECENCY  OF  CIVILIZATION  11 

others  that  do  not  compete  at  all  or  only  feebly,  sur- 
vive. 

5.  Conclusion. — This  recency  of  rapidly  developing 
civilization  compared  with  the  length  of  man's  prehistoric 
period  and  these  truths  regarding  the  origin  and  growth 
of  civilization  are  most  significant.  On  the  one  hand,  they 
suggest  that  civilization  may  still  be  but  an  infant  and 
therefore  that  man  may  yet  be  far  from  the  best 
solution  of  fife's  problems.  On  the  other  hand,  they  show 
with  what  exceeding  difficulty  man  discovered  the  first 
tools  and  methods  for  subduing  nature  and  outgrew  the 
customs  and  beliefs  that  in  each  generation  he  acquired 
from  the  social  group  to  which  he  belonged.  Indeed,  the 
fact  that  change  and  progress  have  been  so  difficult  sug- 
gests that  the  greatest  dangers  and  obstacles  to  progress 
man  faces  in  all  ages  are  conservatism  rather  than  radical- 
ism, inertia  rather  than  perseverance,  group  restraint 
rather  than  individual  initiative,  and  the  ready  acceptance 
of  the  old  and  customary  rather  than  investigation  and 
invention. 

For  further  study  read: 

Boas,  F.,  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man,  1911,  Chaps.  I-IV; 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  Educational  Psychology,  1913,  Vol.  Ill, 
Chap.  X; 

Ratzel,  The  History  of  Mankind,  Book  I. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Thomas,  W.  I.,  Source  Book  for  Social  Origins,  1909. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  HISTORY  OF   PHILOSOPHY 

1.  The  history  of  the  growth  of  knowledge. — As  stated 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  a  civilization,  or  culture,  is  an 
exceeding  complex  group  of  more  or  less  closely  inter- 
connected social  habits,  or  customs,  within  which  group 
are  an  indefinite  number  of  minor,  or  subordinate,  groups. 
Corresponding  to  these  minor  groups  the  study  of  the 
history  of  any  great  civilization  can  be  divided  into  an 
indefinite  number  of  possible  subdivisions.  For  example, 
the  study  of  the  history  of  Roman  civilization  includes 
within  it  the  study  of  the  history  of  many  minor  groups 
of  customs  such  as  that  of  the  Roman  law  or  the  Roman 
military  art,  and  finally  the  study  of  the  history  of  in- 
dividual customs  such  as  that  of  the  Roman  triumphal 
arch  or  that  of  the  Roman  imperium. 

Within  the  history  of  western  civilization  we  are  to 
study  in  this  book  one  such  subordinate  group  of  customs, 
that  is,  we  are  to  study  the  history  of  those  habits,  or 
customs  which  we  call  European  intellectual  Hfe.  From 
the  preceding  chapter  there  follow  at  once  regarding  this 
subject  of  study,  the  intellectual  life  of  Europe,  that  it 
has  evolved  and  that  in  it  are  to  be  found  all  the  major 
characteristics  of  evolving  civilization.  During  the 
"thousands  of  years  of  European  history,  our  insight,  our 
beliefs  and  our  other  habits  of  thought  have  undergone 
vast  changes  corresponding  usually  to  the  vast  changes 
in  our  civilization.  Each  later  stage  of  intellectual  life 
has  evolved  out  of  the  preceding  stage  of  culture,  and 

12 


THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  13 

in  each  later  period  many  of  the  intellectual  habits  of 
earlier  periods  have  survived.  Hence,  precisely  as  our 
European  civilization  evolved  out  of  the  primitive  cul- 
ture of  prehistory,  so  also  did  our  European  intellectual 
life  and  in  particular  our  science;  and,  precisely  as  we 
Europeans  have  ever  remained  primitive  in  some  of  our 
customs,  so  have  we  remained  primitive  in  some  of  our 
beliefs  and  other  habits  of  thought;  and  lastly,  precisely 
as  different  strata  of  our  population  exhibit  customs  of 
unlike  antiquity,  so  do  these  strata  exhibit  also  beliefs 
and  manners  of  thought  of  unequally  remote  origin. 
Let  me  illustrate  each  of  these  points:  The  wonderful 
development  of  Greek  thought  during  the  height  of  Greek 
civilization  and  the  marvellous  progress  of  the  various 
sciences  in  western  Europe  during  the  past  three  hundred 
years  are  evidently  instances  of  vast  evolution  in  intel- 
lectual life.  The  history  of  Enghsh  civil  law  is  an  instance 
of  later  intellectual  habits  evolvmg  out  of  the  customs~of 

^jdi?l_P^r^o'^15£^Lilil§9-J2?--^§^J^^''^^c^^y  with  which  some 
intellectual  custonas  can  survive  for  ages.  The  wide- 
spread belief  among  cultured  peoples  in  man's  immor- 
tality is  one  instance  of  the  survival  of  an  extremely 
ancient  belief,  and  so  is  also  the  belief  that  one  can  do 
acts  of  kindness  for  the  dead.  Finally,  the  widespread 
belief  in  ghosts,  magic,  clairvoyance,  and  magical  cures 
among  the  ignorant  and  isolated  strata  of  European  and 
American  peoples  and  the  absence  of  this  behef  among 
the  highly  cultured  strata  of  these  peoples  illustrate  the 
fact  that  different  strata  exhibit  beUefs  of  unlike  antiq- 
uity.^ 

'  To  this  brief  introductory  statement  of  our  subject  of  study, 
the  growth  of  European  intellectual  life,  should  be  appended  the 
important  truth  that  a  man's  intellect  is  not  one  thing  but  a  group 
of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  elementary  and  largely  independent 
habits,  none  the  less  independent  though  often  variously  organized 


14        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

2.  The  meaning  of  the  term,  philosophy. — Interesting 
as  is  the  entire  story  of  the  growth  of  European  thought, 
we  must  confine  our  study  to  one  part  of  that  story,  the 
history  of  European  philosophical  thought.  What  is 
philosophy,  or  philosophical  thought?  In  the  first  place, 
philosophy  is  an  aspect  of  all  belief  or  thought  from  that  of 
a  savage  or  child  to  that  of  a  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  Hence 
each  normal  human  being  is  a  philosopher  and  therefore 
philosophy  is  something  out  of  doors  and  not  merely 
something  in  libraries  and  in  the  minds  of  extraordinary 
men.    You,  the  reader,  have  a  philosophy  as  truly  as  you 

into  complex  habits.  As  a  result,  some  of  a  man's  beliefs  can  be 
primitive  and  others  modern,  and  some  of  his  beliefs  can  change 
radically  while  others  remain  fixed.  He  can  be  even  the  greatest 
living  scientist  and  yet  a  savage  in  some  of  his  convictions.  In  short, 
the  intellect  even  of  the  modern  cultured  man  is  like  an  historical 
museum ;  for  it  contains  relics  of  every  age  in  his  Une  of  intellectual 
descent,  all  resting  quietly  side  by  side  in  then-  cases,  the  neural  arches 
of  his  nervous  system.  Though  logically  some  of  these  exhibits  (i.  e., 
habits)  are  in  utter  conflict,  psychologically  they  often  remain  peace- 
fully side  by  side  where  training  has  placed  them.  Moreover,  when 
one  is  added  or  one  is  taken  away  from  the  collection  the  others  or 
the  vast  majority  of  the  others  can  remain  undisturbed.  Here  as 
in  other  matters  what  is  true  of  the  individual  is  often  true  also  of 
the  social  group,  for  the  social  intellect  too  changes  by  mere  addition 
and  subtraction  as  well  as  by  reorganization  and  disorganization  of 
customary  beliefs.  For  example,  though  all  our  elementary  schools 
for  generations  have  taught  us  that  the  earth  revolves  on  its  axis 
daily,  and  that  the  earth  and  other  planets  move  in  orbits  about  the 
sun,  still  many  continue  to  locate  God  up  in  heaven.  Though  a 
large  percentage  of  men  in  cultured  lands  have  been  taught  to  re- 
gard medicine  as  a  science  and  a  technical  art,  still  it  is  necessary  for 
the  physician  "to  inspire  confidence  in  us"  by  his  appearance  and 
manner.  To  this  extent  he  is  still  a  " medicine  man."  Though  most 
of  the  events  in  nature  are  explained  by  us  as  naturalistic  and  de- 
terministic, the  acts  of  man's  will  are  still  for  the  most  of  us  super- 
natural and  indeterminate.  Though  we  are  well  aware  that  kings 
are  ordinary  mortals,  even  the  king  of  democratic  England  is  still  a 
sacred  person.  Though  our  morals  have  become  in  part  strictly 
utilitarian,  how  many  trivial  sins  remain  heinous! 


THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  15 

have  a  coat  or  a  knife;  and  this  philosophy  of  yours  has  a 
long  history  reaching  back  into  the  days  before  civilization 
began  as  truly  as  have  your  clothing  and  your  tools  a 
story  reaching  back  before  the  days  when  men  began  to 
work  metals  and  to  weave  baskets  and  cloth.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  as  all  beliefs  and  thoughts  are  usually  social 
habits,  so  also  is  philosophy  a  social  habit.  Precisely  as  we 
speak  of  an  eighteenth  century  custom  of  dress,  so  also 
may  we  speak  of  eighteenth  century  philosophical  thought; 
and  precisely  as  we  use  the  expression,  English  law,  so 
also  may  we  use  the  expression,  Enghsh  philosophy.  In 
short,  philosophy  is  the  name  of  certain  customs;  and  every 
normal  man,  civilized  or  savage,  possesses  one  or  another 
of  these  groups  of  habits  and  for  the  greater  part  he  pos- 
sesses them  in  common  with  his  people,  class  or  set. 

But  what  marks  such  a  habit,  that  is,  such  a  belief  or 
manner  of  thought  as  philosophical?  To  answer  this 
question  either  definitely  or  clearly  is  difficult.  A  philo- 
sophical belief  or  manner  of  thought  differs  from  any  other 
by  being  logically  general  and  the  more  general  it  is  the 
more  genuinely  philosophical  is  the  habit.  Again  a  belief 
is  philosophical  provided  it  is  logically  fundamental  in  a 
man's  thinking.  For  example,  the  present  widespread 
belief  that  every  event  has  a  cause  and  that  this  cause  is 
always  of  such  a  character  that  it  can  be  discovered  and 
verified  by  employing  the  methods  of  scientific  research,  is 
a  philosophical  habit  of  thought,  a  habit  actually  control- 
ling the  behavior  of  men  in  founding  the  research  labora- 
tories of  the  many  types  which  now  exist.  This  habit  of 
scientifically  investigating  everything  that  is  of  any  in- 
terest or  importance  to  mankind  is  relatively  new  in 
the  history  of  civilization.  It  did  not  exist  in  the  middle 
ages  and  has  since  come  only  step  by  step.  One  name  for 
it  is  naturahsm.  Now  naturalism  is  a  highly  general 
doctrine,  for  it  is  applied  to  almost  everything  intellectual 


16        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

in  which  cultured  men  are  interested.  Moreover,  it  is 
logically  fundamental;  that  is  to  say,  if  it  is  not  true 
thousands  of  behefs  which  we  regard  as  virtually  certain 
are  false.    It  is  therefore  philosophical. 

The  definition  of  philosophy  is  so  important  that  it 
justifies  the  mentioning  of  several  other  examples  of  philo- 
sophical custom.  The  change  in  the  astronomical  belief 
during  the  sixteenth  century  from  the  geocentric  to  the 
heliocentric  hypothesis  was  philosophical;  for  the  older 
belief  was  logically  indispensable  to  the  general  conception 
of  the  universe  entertained  throughout  the  middle  ages 
and  the  ancient  world.  The  rise  of  the  belief,  usually 
called  the  conservation  of  energy,  was  an  important  event 
in  the  history  of  philosophic  thought  because  this  doctrine 
is  fundamental  to  all  natural  sciences  and  their  application. 
Again,  those  principles  underlying  the  French  revolution, 
called  the  Rights  of  Man,  may  properly  be  called  philo- 
sophical ;  so  also  may  the  religious  belief  in  a  universal  di- 
vine providence.  In  artistic  criticism  the  difference  be- 
tween those  who  emphasize  structure  or  form  and  those 
who  minimize  this,  emphasizing  on  the  contrary  color  or 
content  may  properly  be  called  philosophical.  Indeed,  I 
see  no  reason  why  such  a  difference  in  art  as  that  between 
the  Greek  and  the  Gothic  should  not  also  be  called  philo- 
sophical. In  short,  whatever  is  highly  general  or  logically 
fundamental  or  nearly  fundamental  in  man's  thoughts, 
in  any  period  or  in  any  land,  is  philosophical,  however 
indefinite  the  limits  between  such  thought  and  that  which 
we  do  not  call  philosophical  must  remain. 

3.  Philosophical  growth  and  its  causes. — The  student 
of  the  evolution  of  civilization  will  expect  to  find  exempli- 
fied in  the  history  of  philosophical  thought  the  same 
general  features  of  evolution  that  we  have  already  out- 
lined. To  him  it  is  a  matter  of  course  that  modern  philo- 
sophical thought  has  developed  from  the  intellectual  life 


THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  17 

of  earlier  times  and  ultimately  from  primitive  belief  and 
thought;  also  that  much  of  the  ancient  and  even  primitive 
has  survived,  especially  among  the  isolated  peoples  and  the 
ignorant  classes.  Indeed,  he  would  expect  to  find  that  the 
inertia  of  philosophical  thought  is  especially  great;  because 
such  thought  is  logically  general  and  fundamental,  and 
many  customs  have  to  change  before  a  philosophical 
growth  has  been  completed.  Therefore  any  marked 
change  in  philosophical  thought  deserves  the  name  revo- 
lution. For  example,  it  has  taken  centuries  of  the  bitterest 
struggle  against  individual  and  group  inertia  to  change 
the  philosophical  thought  of  medieval  Europe  into  that 
of  Europe  of  the  twentieth  century;  and  the  process  has 
by  no  means  even  yet  reached  an  equilibrium,  as  the 
continued  growth  of  democracy  and  of  naturalism  bears 
witness. 

We  may  now  ask  the  most  important  question  a  student 
of  the  history  of  philosophy  can  raise :  What  causes  philo- 
sophical change  and  who  discovers  or  invents  the  new 
philosophy?  Evidently,  it  follows  from  what  has  been  said 
in  this  book  thus  far  that  there  are  few  places  where 
the  individual  man  is  less  able  to  change  himself  and  his 
fellows  than  in  their  philosophy.  Then  too,  philosophy  is 
pre-eminently  a  group  phenomenon,  and  groups  are  usually 
inert.  Indeed,  few  changes  in  civilization  are  the  work  of 
only  one  man  even  though  the  part  some  one  man  has 
played  is  indispensable;  and  how  much  fewer  must  such 
changes  be  when  they  are  revolutionary  group  changes! 
Hence  we  may  regard  the  causes  which  bring  about 
marked  philosophical  growth  among  a  people  or  class  as 
many,  widespread  and  various.  In  the  first  place,  every 
cause  that  affects  the  general  civilization,  be  the  cause 
political,  social,  economic,  industrial,  religious  or  intel- 
lectual can  lead  to  profound  changes  in  at  least  some  of  the 
intellectual  habits  either  of  the  community  or  of  some 


18        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

classes  within  the  community.  Thus  the  multitudinous 
causes  that  brought  into  existence  modern  Europe  were 
also  the  causes  that  in  great  part  transformed  Europe 
intellectually.  Such  were  the  growth  of  cities  with  their 
industry,  wealth  and  trade,  the  widening  of  the  geographi- 
cal horizon  to  include  the  entire  earth,  the  increasing 
political  solidarity  and  centralization  of  government  and 
the  decay  of  feudalism.  In  the  second  place,  great  practi- 
cal inventions  and  great  scientific  discoveries  can  lead  to 
profound  changes  in  philosophy.  To  discover  ways  and 
means  to  make  the  supply  of  food  surer,  to  conquer  dis- 
ease, and  in  general  to  increase  the  power  of  man  over 
his  fortune  is  to  change  his  attitude  toward  the  world 
about  and  above  him;  for  to  do  so  is  to  remove  the  mys- 
tery, uncertainty  and  magic  which  seem  to  primitive 
peoples  to  surround  them  and  to  hold  them  in  arbitrary 
and  irresistible  control.  Likewise,  to  discover  important 
facts  and  to  explain  familiar  facts  in  new  ways  are  pre- 
eminently to  cause  philosophical  change.  The  astronomi- 
cal, physical  and  biological  discoveries  made  during  the 
past  four  hundred  years  have  revolutionized  our  concep- 
tion of  nature  and  of  man's  place  in  nature.  Verily  we 
live  intellectually  in  a  different  universe  from  that  in  which 
our  fathers  lived  five  centuries  ago! 

If  such  are  the  causes  of  philosophical  growth,  who  are 
the  great  philosophical  discoverers?  Evidently,  the  great 
leaders  in  every  walk  of  life  during  such  periods  of  progress 
and  especially  the  great  scientific  discoverers  and  the  great 
thinkers.  Of  the  latter  class  such  men  as  Galilei,  Harvey, 
Newton,  Lyell  and  Darwin  literall}^  disclosed  to  the  eyes 
of  modern  Europe  a  hidden  universe.  So  did  the  great 
classical  scholars  and  artists  of  the  Italian  Renascence. 
So  did  the  great  jurists.  So  did  the  great  poUtical  leaders 
of  the  modern  democratic  movements.  So  did  the  great 
explorers  of  the  fifteenth  century.    And  so  did  the  great 


THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  19 

inventors  of  modern  machinery,  of  modern  medicine,  and 
of  modern  commerce  and  banking.  But  in  particular  it 
is  true  that  the  discoverers  of  important  facts  and  the  men 
who  first  succeed  in  rightly  explaining  facts  are  pre- 
eminently the  men  that  deserve  to  be  called  the  authors 
of  philosophy. 

4.  The  program  of  this  book. — Having  now  surveyed 
the  field  which  forms  the  subject-matter  of  our  study  we 
can  very  briefly  outline  the  program  of  this  book.  The 
general  subject  being  the  history  of  Western  philosophic 
thought,  we  shall  give  a  very  brief  account  of  the  changes 
in  man's  mental  nature  wrought  by  civilization  and  of  the 
primitive  thought  out  of  which  Western  thought  has  de- 
veloped, and  then  we  shall  trace  the  development  of  philo- 
sophic thought  within  civilization  from  the  thought  of  the 
Greeks  to  that  of  modern  Western  Europe  and  the  coun- 
tries most  closely  allied  to  Europe  in  culture.  The  subject 
of  the  next  chapter  will  be  the  changes  wrought  in  man's 
mental  nature  by  civilization. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Sidgwick,  H.,  Philosophy,  Its  Scope  and  Relations,  1902. 


CHAPTER  III 

CHANGES  IN  MAN's  MENTAL  NATURE  WROUGHT  BY 
CIVILIZATION 

1.  Introductory. — We  have  now  answered  in  most  gen- 
eral terms  the  question :  What  are  the  factors  which  create 
civihzation  and  science?  Let  us  next  endeavor  to  answer 
a  second  and  related  question:  In  what  general  or  typical 
respects  does  the  highly  civilized  and  intellectual  man 
differ  mentally  from  the  savage,  the  barbarian,  and  the 
uncultured?  ^  What  general  and  typical  changes  take 
place  in  man's  learned,  or  acquired  mental  nature  as  he 
becomes  more  and  more  civilized?  ^  These  changes  in 
man's  acquired  mental  nature  can  all  be  roughly  sug- 
gested by  saying  that  the  savage  stands  between  the 
highest  brutes  and  the  highest  men,  or  that  he  is  mentally 
more  brutal  than  is  the  civilized.  Hence,  in  the  chief 
respects  in  which  human  mental  nature  differs  from  that 
of  the  highest  brutes,  we  shall  find  the  answer  to  our 
question.  These  differences  are  at  least  six  in  number, 
(a)  Man  differs  from  the  brute  in  his  capacities  to  learn. 
(6)  He  differs  from  the  brute  in  being  instinctively  more 
curious  and  in  his  playful  love  of  thinking  for  its  own  sake, 
(c)  He  differs  from  the  brute  in  his  capacity  to  learn  to 
react  to  the  elementary  and  abstract  features  and  relations 

1  As  we  have  seen,  there  is  little  reason  to  believe  that  we  differ 
in  inborn  nature  from  our  barbaric  ancestors  of  four  thousand  years 
ago.  Hence  throughout  this  chapter  we  are  dealing  only  with  man's 
learned,  or  acquired  mental  nature. 

2  Evidently  this  question  is  directed  to  the  historian  and  to  the 
psychologist  in  common. 

20 


CHANGES  IN  MAN'S  MENTAL  NATURE  21 

of  the  total  situations  to  which  he  has  been  responding. 
(d)  He  is  less  crudely  emotional  than  is  the  brute,  (e)  He 
is  to  a  less  extent  the  creature  of  the  moment,  that  is,  he 
is  less  suggestible.  (/)  He  is  more  social,  that  is,  he  is  more 
interested  in  the  behavior  of  his  fellows  and  his  responses 
are  more  liable  to  be  controlled  by  their  behavior  and  wel- 
fare. 

2.  Learning  by  imitation. — That  brutes  ever  learn 
from  perceiving  the  conduct  of  other  members  of  their 
species  is  highly  doubtful.  It  is  certain  that  the  child  does 
so  frequently.  For  example,  we  can  show  the  child  or  the 
man  how  to  ring  a  bell,  hft  a  latch,  open  a  box;  whereas 
it  is  doubtful  that  the  monkey  for  whom  among  brutes 
such  tricks  are  easiest  can  learn  them  by  imitation.  Though 
a  monkey,  an  elephant,  or  a  dog  may  learn  such  tricks 
easily,  he  does  so  by  what  is  called  the  trial  and  chance 
success  (or  trial  and  error)  method,  that  is,  by  hitting  upon 
the  trick  the  first  few  times  quite  accidentally  and,  if  re- 
warded, by  doing  it  again  and  again  until  the  habit  is  well 
established.  Finally,  man  can  learn  rationally,  or  through 
thinking  out  the  way  and  means  or  by  having  the  way  and 
means  explained  to  him.  This  we  have  every  reason  to 
believe  is  quite  beyond  the  brute.^ 

Though  the  savage  child  has  the  inborn  capacities  to 
acquire  these  higher  ways  of  learning,  his  environment 

1  Both  of  these  human  methods,  it  is  trae,  presuppose  considerable 
education  of  the  trial  and  success  sort  in  infancy  and  childhood,  and 
can  probably  be  reduced  to  this  method  of  learning.  The  child  that 
can  open  a  box  by  imitation  has  already  learned  by  the  primitive 
method  to  manipulate  many  similar  things  and  is  strictly  speaking 
not  imitating  but  using  habits  already  formed.  In  short,  the  higher 
methods,  imitation  and  reasoning  have  grown  out  of  the  trial  and 
success  method  by  continuous  stages.  But  even  so,  the  child's 
docility  is,  to  an  extraordinary  extent,  superior  to  that  of  the  most 
intelligent  brute  precisely  in  this  marked  capacity  to  acquire  higher 
methods  of  learning. 


22        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

does  not  educate  him  in  these  traits  to  any  such  extent  as 
civihzed  environment  with  its  work-shops  and  schools 
educates  the  child  of  modern  Europe.  Further,  a  similar 
truth  holds  of  the  successive  stages  through  which  civihzed 
man  has  risen  from  prehistoric  barbarism  and  ultimately 
from  savagedom.  In  other  words,  the  lower  down  we  go 
in  civilization  the  cruder  become  the  ways  in  which  learning 
takes  place.  At  one  extreme  stands  the  crude  trial  and 
success  method  of  the  brute  and  at  the  other  extreme  the 
methods  and  technique  of  modern  scientific  research, 
exposition,  and  demonstration. 

3.  The  broadening  of  curiosity. — The  second  human 
trait,  man's  instinctive  curiosity,  is  known  to  everyone 
familiar  with  young  children.  The  eagerness  with  which 
they  watch  moving  objects  and  persons  about  them, 
inspect  objects,  and  manipulate  everything  upon  which 
they  can  lay  hands,  and  also  the  ceaseless  questioning  of 
the  older  child,  illustrate  this  manifold  curiosity.  Here 
too  environment  has  made  a  great  difference  in  the  traits 
resulting  from  the  same  inborn  nature.  In  the  civilized  en- 
vironment are  innumerable  and  ever-varying  objects  that 
attract  the  child's  attention,  and  ever-present  encourage- 
ment to  attend  and  rev/ard  for  attending.  Later,  the 
school  and,  later  still,  the  professional  environment  lead 
him  to  acquire  interests  far  removed  from  his  original 
tendencies  to  be  curious.  The  result  is  that  the  highly 
cultured  modern  has  a  wealth  of  interests  in  problems, 
in  things,  and  in  events,  to  which  the  savage  is  as  Wind  as 
are  man's  domestic  animals. 

In  this  mental  characteristic  also  the  history  of  civili- 
zation reveals  the  gradual  ascent  from  the  traits  of  the 
savage  to  the  traits  of  the  highly  intellectual  and  cultured 
modern.  Little  by  little  the  civilized  man  has  acquired 
new  and  additional  interests  until  his  interests  have  be- 
come numberless  and  world-wide,  until  the  world  to  which 


CHANGES  IN  MAN'S  MENTAL  NATURE  23 

he  responds  is  infinitely  more  complex  than  is  the  world 
of  his  savage  ancestor. 

4.  Increase  of  the  ability  to  analyze. — The  third  trait, 
man's  abihty  to  analyze,  is  pre-eminently  human;  indeed 
even  the  average  man,  not  to  mention  the  very  stupid  man, 
is  narrowly  Umited  in  the  extent  to  which  he  can  become 
interested  in  the  abstract  and  general  and  respond  to  them 
successfully.  The  brutes  seem  able  to  react  only  to  total 
situations  and  sensible  quahties,  and  never  to  the  abstract 
or  general  aspects  of  these  situations,  to  their  elements, 
or  especially  to  the  relations  holding  between  these  ele- 
ments. In  contrast  to  the  brute  and  the  imbecile,  the 
average  child  learns,  and  learns  easily,  to  react  to  the  shape 
of  an  object,  to  its  squareness,  its  roundness,  or  its  triangu- 
larity. He  learns  to  react  to  the  length  and  the  breadth  of 
objects,  to  their  number,  their  age,  their  ownership,  their 
value,  and  to  many  other  general  or  abstract  properties. 
However,  as  we  raise  the  degree  of  generality  and  abstract- 
ness,  mental  tests  show  that  we  are  passing  beyond  the 
intelligence  of  the  average  child;  and  finally  when  we  test 
men's  ability  to  apprehend  such  relations  as  are  studied 
in  advanced  courses  in  logic,  mathematics  and  other 
sciences,  we  find  that  we  are  passing  beyond  the  intelli- 
gence of  all  men  but  the  exceptionally  intellectual.  From 
all  of  this  we  can  infer  that  to  the  ability  of  the  brute  to 
react  to  total  situations  and  to  the  sensible  qualities  of 
things,  man  has  in  the  course  of  his  evolution  from  the 
brute  acquired  the  further  capacity  of  splitting  up  these 
total  situations  into  their  elements  and  of  reacting  to  these 
elements  and  especially  to  their  relations.  Indeed,  pre- 
cisely this  capacity  is  what  we  mean  by  the  word, 
intellect. 

In  turn,  civiUzed  environment  has  proved  to  be  a  power- 
ful agent  for  developing  these  higher  capacities  of  man, 
when  they  exist  in  the  child,  into  the  intellectual  habits 


24        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  the  adult;  whereas  the  savage  envu-onment  has  not  so 
proved,  for  it  keeps  man  Wind  to  those  abstract  elements, 
those  general  aspects,  and  those  hidden  relations  of  things 
which  to  the  modern  European  seem  unavoidably  notice- 
able. And  the  history  of  civiHzation  here  too  repeats  its 
story  of  man's  advance  by  stages  from  savagedom.  To 
discover  the  general  and  abstract  and  to  notice  the  obscure 
relations  between  entities  have  been  slow  and  difficult 
tasks.  A  few  steps  have  sometimes  required  even  cen- 
turies. However,  little  by  little  under  the  leadership  of 
men  of  genius,  highly  cultured  mankind  has  come  in  time 
to  respond  to  the  multitudinous  entities  studied  in  the 
abstract  and  general  sciences  of  our  modern  world. 

5.  Man  becomes  less  crudely  emotional. — Psychol- 
ogists tell  us  that  the  cruder  emotions  are  made  up  of  gross 
and  blind  responses  and  that  their  peculiar  field  of  sensory 
experience  is  one  where  analysis  and  knowledge  have  never 
made  much  progress.  In  other  words,  the  cruder  emotions 
are  especially  symptoms  of  a  lack  of  definite  learned  ways 
of  reacting  to  the  given  situation.  To  illustrate  these 
points :  Compare  the  utter  bfindness  of  an  experience  made 
up  solely  of  such  sensations  as  those  of  hunger,  satiety, 
pain,  comfort,  and  drowsiness,  with  the  information  we  owe 
to  our  external  senses,  especially  to  our  eyes,  ears,  and 
cutaneous  and  kinesthetic  sense  organs.  Again,  compare 
the  reactions  of  a  panic-stricken  man  or  child,  for  example, 
a  child  being  stung  by  a  wasp,  with  the  thrusts  and  parries 
of  two  expert  contestants  in  a  fencing  duel.  As  man  has 
evolved  from  the  brute  and  in  turn  from  the  savage,  a 
tendency  has  arisen  to  eliminate  the  crude  emotions  of  the 
brute  and  of  the  child  and  to  substitute  for  them  less 
crude  emotional  responses  and  especially  skillful  responses. 
That  is  to  say,  the  tendency  has  developed  to  eliminate 
the  blind  and  crude  reactions  of  anger,  joy,  fear,  and  simi- 
lar types  of  response,  and  to  acquire  in  their  place  the  defi- 


CHANGES  IN  MAN'S  MENTAL  NATURE  25 

nite  and  precise  reactions  of  the  thoughtful,  the  learned 
and  the  skillful. 

Though  this  transformation  is  never  complete  even  in 
the  most  cultured;  the  man  or  woman  remaining  crudely 
emotional  in  highly  civilized  communities  is  regarded  as 
either  sick  or  mentally  deficient,  as  insane  or  criminal,  as 
superstitious  or  grossly  undisciplined.  Where  cultured 
man  has  remained  emotional  there  has  often  arisen  in  the 
place  of  the  savage  emotions  critical  insights  and  types 
of  feeling  which  may  be  called  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the 
word  esthetic.  Good  taste  tends  to  restrain  and  to  select 
wherever  and  whenever  emotions  arise;  and  crude  appe- 
tites, crude  enjoyments,  crude  fears,  crude  griefs,  and  crude 
ragings  tend  to  be  condemned  and  inhibited. 

6.  Man  becomes  less  crudely  suggestible. — Another 
prominent  difference  between  the  mind  of  the  brute  and 
that  of  man  and  between  the  mind  of  the  savage  and  that 
of  the  civilized  is  the  decreasing  suggestibility  of  the  higher 
mind.  The  child  and  the  savage  are  markedly  creatures 
of  the  sensations  of  the  moment.  Restrained  impulses,  long 
sustained  work,  consistent  plans,  consideration  of  to- 
morrow's welfare,  careful  scrutiny  of  beliefs  are  seldom 
among  their  virtues.  Only  the  highly  trained  and  dis- 
ciplined mind  can  consider  and  keep  considering  the  wel- 
fare of  a  lifetime  and  of  future  generations,  or  the  many 
elements  that  enter  into  most  problems  and  their  solutions. 
Suggestibility  is  then  merely  a  name  for  the  absence  of 
such  restraint  in  thought  and  other  types  of  behavior.^ 
To  illustrate:  At  one  extreme  (suggestibility)  we  might 

^  This  restraint  is  acquired  through  two  mental  or  neural  processes, 
facilitation  and  inhibition.  Through  association  or  acquired  con- 
nections many  mental  or  neural  factors  determine  positively  (or 
faciUtate)  our  thought  and  conduct,  and  they  prevent  (or  inhibit) 
other  thoughts  or  sensations  being  our  sole  master.  That  is,  the 
presence  or  absence  of  such  acquired  connections,  or  again  the  vig- 
orous functioning  or  the  lethargy  of  these  connections,  when  present, 


26       THE    HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

cite  instances  of  conduct  all  the  way  from  being  influenced 
in  our  purchases  by  some  clever  advertisement  we  have 
read,  to  the  slavish  obedience  of  the  patient  in  deep  hypno- 
sis or  to  the  blind  impulse  of  a  panic-stricken  mob.  At 
the  other  extreme  (restraint)  we  might  cite  instances  of 
conduct  all  the  way  from  the  child  hesitating,  because  of 
past  sad  experiences,  before  again  robbing  the  pantry, 
to  the  justices  of  the  supreme  court  dehberating  individu- 
ally and  as  a  body  for  months  before  rendering  an  impor- 
tant decision.  In  short,  as  man  becomes  more  civilized, 
more  factors  or  conditions  determine  his  thought  and  his 
ordinary  conduct.  Both  become  restrained.  The  many 
interests  of  life,  the  many  aspects  of  each  situation  as  it  is 
faced,  the  many  similar  experiences  in  days  gone  by, 
the  many  deeds  and  sayings  of  other  men,  all  these  play 
a  part  in  facilitating  and  inhibiting  and  thereby  in  con- 
trolling judgments  and  other  behavior. 

One  type  of  suggestibility  is  especially  characteristic 
of  savages  and  barbarians,  that  is,  the  complete  dominance, 
even  tyranny  of  custom.  Indeed,  it  is  only  gradually  and 
only  in  advanced  civilization  that  the  individual  becomes 
free  at  all  to  think  and  to  judge  for  himself  and  to  disobey 
mere  convention;  but  even  in  the  most  advanced  civiHza- 
tions  this  freedom  is  sometimes  narrowly  limited  and  al- 
ways somewhat  limited.  Thus  even  where  you  and  I  are 
legally  and  socially  free  to  think  and  to  do  as  we  will,  we 
are  still  in  many  matters  the  creatures  of  the  group  mind. 
We  are  so  even  where  we  try  not  to  be  so;  for  no  man  has 
succeeded  in  throwing  off  altogether  the  habits  acquired 
in  the  school  and  in  the  social  environment,  even  when  con- 
vinced that  he  should  do  so.    Here  most  radically  minded 

determine  respectively  whether  we  are  genuinely  deliberative  or 
the  mere  creatures  of  impulses.  In  a  sentence,  our  freedom  from 
suggestion  or  hypnosis  depends  upon  the  complexity  or  degree  of 
integration  of  our  habits. 


CHANGES  IN  MAN'S  MENTAL  NATURE  27 

men  are  self-deceived.  They  try  "  to  begin  all  over  again ; " 
but  a  later  generation  studying  their  lives  sees  what  they 
themselves  could  not  see,  that  they  were  children  of  their 
age  and  nation.  Even  men  who  in  their  day  were  bitter 
enemies  and  thought  themselves  poles  asunder,  seem  to  the 
historian  of  their  period  markedly  alike.  For  example, 
the  pagan  philosopher  of  Greece  and  Rome  and  the  con- 
temporary Christian  bishop  seem  to  the  student  of  the 
history  of  thought  remarkably  alike  and  far  more  alike 
than  either  is  like  any  modern  man,  Christian  or  infidel. 
In  short,  even  the  most  radical  man  frees  himself  only 
here  and  there  from  the  group  mind.  However,  there  has 
come  to  be  a  marked  difference  between  the  barbarian  and 
the  civilized.  The  thoughtful  and  learned  man  tries  to 
free  himself,  and  democratic  society  tries  in  part  at  least 
to  permit  him  to  be  free.  As  civilization  advances  both 
succeed  to  a  greater  extent. 

Hence  the  history  of  individual  freedom  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  and  important  chapters  in  the  history  of 
civilization;  and  the  struggle  for  freedom  has  been  one  of 
the  bitterest  wars  that  man  has  had  to  wage,  a  war  not  yet 
fought  to  a  finish.  Under  primitive  conditions  not  only 
the  authority  of  custom  is  absolute  but  the  obedience  to 
custom  is  utterly  blind.  What  later  become  matters  of 
free  reflective  thought,  the  morals,  the  religious  customs 
and  beliefs,  the  civil  and  social  customs,  the  political 
institutions,  the  education  of  children,  and  the  study  of 
man  and  of  the  world  about  him  are  for  the  most  part  in 
primitive  society  matters  of  blind  social  tradition,  matters 
settled  entirely  by  the  group  mind. 

We  may  then  conclude :  To  obey  custom  is  always  easier 
than  to  invent  new  and  better  methods.  For  the  stupid 
and  ignorant  it  is  impossible  to  do  more  than  to  obey 
custom;  but  for  some  men  in  the  community  to  become 
critical  of  and  rebellious  toward  bUnd  customs  is  dis- 


28       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tinctly  a  sign  of  growing  civilization.  As  civilization 
advances  the  field  of  criticism  and  the  freedom  of  criticism 
keep  extending.  Hence  we  may  add  as  a  further  change 
in  mental  trait  coming  with  civilization  the  growing  free- 
dom from  custom  and  the  corresponding  increase  in  critical 
mindedness,  the  gradual  throwing  off  of  the  herd  behavior 
of  primitive  folk. 

7.  Man  becomes  more  sociable. — Finally  our  list  of 
the  changes  wrought  by  civilization  in  man's  acquired  men- 
tal nature  includes  increasing  sociaUzation.  The  child  is 
in  some  respects  markedly  social,  but  is  also  bhndly  cruel 
and  selfish;  and  the  stupid  child  is  more  hable  to  remain 
so  than  is  the  intellectually  gifted  child.  As  we  grow  to 
adulthood  we  learn  to  adjust  ourselves  to  others'  feelings, 
interests  and  welfare  as  well  as  to  our  own;  we  learn  to 
co-operate  with  others,  to  adopt  the  customs  and  etiquette 
of  companions,  to  be  rehable  in  promises,  and  to  have 
many  common  ideals  and  enterprises.  So  also  in  the  course 
of  man's  history,  with  increasing  civilization  we  find  as 
both  cause  and  effect  increasing  socialization.  Hordes 
become  tribes,  tribes  nations,  and  nations  empires.  States 
originally  held  together  and  in  order  only  by  the  strong 
arm  become  constitutional  and  law-abiding  democracies. 
Slavery  and  serfdom  give  place  to  universal  citizenship. 
Privilege  and  greed  tend  to  be  replaced  by  habits  of  patriot- 
ism and  humanitarianism. 

8.  Conclusion. — Let  us,  to  sum  up,  repeat  our  list  of 
prominent  changes  wrought  by  civilized  environment  in 
man's  acquired  mental  nature,  (a)  Man  acquires  higher 
ways  of  learning  beyond  the  crude  trial  and  success  method 
of  the  brute.  (6)  Curious  and  loving  to  think,  he  in  time 
consciously  adopts  as  his  enterprise  the  work  of  the  in- 
tellect, (c)  Analyzing  further  and  further  the  world  to 
which  he  responds,  his  conduct  is  governed  more  and  more 
by  the  general  and  the  abstract  and  less  and  less  by  crude 


CHANGES  IN  MAN'S  MENTAL  NATURE  29 

unanalyzed  totals,  (d)  As  he  thus  becomes  more  skillful 
and  intellectual  he  becomes  less  crudely  emotional,  (e) 
Likewise  he  becomes  less  suggestible,  that  is,  more  thought- 
ful, more  consistent,  and  farther  sighted.  (/)  Finally,  he 
becomes  more  and  more  sociahzed.^  These  changes 
wrought  in  general  by  civilization,  are  wrought  within  the 
civilized  community  to  a  yet  greater  extent  by  what  we 
call  culture  and  higher  education.  In  general,  as  the  sav- 
age stands  between  the  brute  and  the  civiHzed  man;  so 
the  stupid,  the  ignorant,  and  the  uncultured  stand  be- 
tween the  savage  and  the  highly  cultured  man.  Similarly, 
within  the  historical  development  of  the  highly  civilized 
nations,  increasing  civilization  and  in  particular  increasing 
scientific  knowledge  have  tended  to  bring  about  precisely 
these  typical  changes  in  the  mental  nature  of  the  people, 
or  at  least  of  the  highlj'-  intellectual  individuals  among  the 
people.  Thus  wherever  science  has  come  and  has  advanced, 
man  has  risen  farthest  above  a  purely  barbaric  civiliza- 
tion; and  if  man  in  Western  Europe  to-day  exhibits  on  the 
whole  these  six  improvements  in  mental  nature  more  than 
man  ever  has  in  his  preceding  history,  this  fact  may  be 
ascribed  in  part  at  least  to  the  marvellous  advance  in  scien- 
tific knowledge  made  in  the  past  three  centuries. 

For  further  study  read: 

Thomdike,  E.  L.,  Animal  Intelligence,  1911,  282-294; 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  1909,  17-90; 

Buiy,  J.  B.,  A  History  of  Freedom  of  Thought,  1913,  7-21; 

*  Of  course  any  such  list  of  general  changes  is  really  only  a  vague 
statement  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  particular  specific  changes. 
Moreover,  the  possibilities  of  combination  or  variation  within  such 
an  enormous  number  are  countless,  which  statement  in  turn  suggests 
the  important  truth  that  the  rate  of  progress  in  these  mental  changes 
may  vary  markedly  from  one  particular  trait  to  another.  As  indi- 
viduals differ,  so  do  peoples  differ.  Some  individuals  and  some 
nations  may  be  advanced  in  some  traits  and  be  behind  in  others,  or 
hold  to  some  traits  and  lose  others. 


30        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Thomas,  W.  I.,  Source  Book  for  Social  Origins,  1909,  143- 
212,  335-439; 

Sidis,  B.,  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  1898,  297-342. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  The  Original  Nature  of  Man,  1913; 

McDougall,  W.,  Social  Psychology,  1908; 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  Animal  Intelligence; 

Sidis,  B.,  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion; 

Tarde,  G.  (transl.  Parsons),  The  Laws  of  Imitation,  1903; 

Ross,  E.  A.,  Social  Psychology,  1915; 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  Mind  in  Evolution,  1901 ; 

Giddings,  F.  H.,  Elements  of  Sociology,  1898; 

Ward,  L.  F.,  The  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  1893; 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  The  Basis  of  Social  Relations,  1902; 

Schultze,  F.,  Psychologie  der  Naturvolker,  1900; 

StoU,  0.,  Suggestion  und  Hypnotismus  in  der  Volkerpsy- 
chologie,   1904; 

Robinson,  J.,  Psychologie  der  Naturvolker,  1896; 

Mason,  O.  T.,  Origins  of  Invention,  1895; 

Keane,  A.  H.,  Ethnology,  1901;  Man,  Past  and  Present, 
1899; 

Morgan,  L.  H.,  Ancient  Society; 

Ratzel,  The  History  of  Mankind,  Bk.  I; 

Sutherland,  A.,  The  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  In- 
stinct,   1898; 

Westermarck,   E.,  The  Origin  and  Development  of  the 
Moral  Ideas,  1906; 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  Morals  in  Evolution,  1914; 

Bury,  J.  B.,  A  History  of  Freedom  of  Thought. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PRIMITIVE    KNOWLEDGE   AND   THOUGHT 

1.  Primitive  thought. — Man  had  an  implicit  philosophy 
long  before  he  had  science.  That  is,  before  science  he  had 
a  philosophy  provided  we  mean  by  the  word  philosophy 
not  an  explicit  doctrine  but  a  general  intellectual  attitude 
or  way  of  approaching  and  solving  problems.  Let  us  call 
this  early  stage  of  thought  before  science,  primitive  thought, 
and  let  us  call  its  philosophy,  the  philosophy  of  primitive 
thought. 

The  expression  "primitive  thought"  when  thus  defined 
remains  ambiguous,  for  it  may  mean  three  distinct  classes 
of  belief.  First,  it  may  mean  a  stage  in  a  people's  history 
preceding  all  scientific  thought.  Second,  it  may  mean  a 
stratum  of  every  nation's  intellectual  fife,  the  beliefs  of 
the  stupid  and  of  the  ignorant  who  have  remamed  intel- 
lectually primitive  while  part  of  the  population  has  be- 
come cultured  and  critically  minded.  Third,  it  may  mean 
prescientific  beliefs  held  even  by  learned  and  thoughtful 
men.  As  preceding  chapters  have  told  us,  there  are  so 
many  things  in  this  world  for  man  to  think  about,  and  the 
thinking  which  he  does  depends  so  largely  upon  environ- 
mental stimuli;  that  part  of  a  nation's  population  can 
advance  in  culture  though  the  remainder  does  not,  and  an 
individual,  or  a  people,  or  even  an  age  can  advance  de- 
cidedly in  thought  regarding  some  matters  though  remain- 
ing markedly  primitive  in  thought  regarding  other  matters. 
For  example,  a  proficient  physicist  can  be  utterly  igno- 
rant of  political  and  economic  science,  a  clever  business 

31 


32        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

man  can  be  foolishly  superstitious,  an  age  of  great  astro- 
nomical, physical,  and  geographical  discoveries  can  be 
most  primitive  in  its  treatment  of  the  criminal,  the  pauper, 
and  the  insane,  or  an  age  can  be  intensely  interested  and 
keen  in  its  theological  speculations  but  primitive  in  its 
beliefs  regarding  the  physical  environment  and  regarding 
the  nature  and  causes  of  disease.  In  short,  no  man  and  no 
age  is  completely  free  from  primitive  thought. 

Nevertheless,  the  name  "primitive  thought"  is  ascribed 
most  frequently  to  the  beliefs  and  customs  of  certain  epochs 
in  the  history  of  civilization  and  to  the  beliefs  and  customs 
of  the  people  of  certain  lands  which  have  remained  savage 
or  barbaric  throughout  history.  For  example,  three 
thousand  years  ago  primitive  thought  prevailed  every- 
where. In  the  middle  ages  of  Western  Europe  the  his- 
torian finds  an  immense  amount  of  belief  and  custom  that 
should  be  called  primitive.  In  central  Africa  the  thought 
has  remained  primitive  to  our  own  day.  Let  us  adopt 
this  use  of  the  term,  primitive  thought;  but  let  us  in  so 
doing  not  forget  that  in  studying  primitive  thought  we 
are  studying  not  only  an  ancient  epoch,  an  epoch  before 
science  and  in  the  early  stages  of  civihzation,  but  also  an 
epoch  many  of  whose  beliefs  and  customs  have  obtained 
always  and  everywhere  among  the  peoples  of  the  earth, 
and  whose  beliefs  therefore  can  be  and  should  be  illustrated 
by  examples  taken  from  every  age  and  clime. 

2.  Three  kinds  of  beliefs  held  by  the  primitive  thinker. 
— In  the  life  of  every  man,  and  so  in  the  life  of  primitive 
man,  three  stages  or  levels  of  knowledge  are  to  be  found. 
The  first  stage  is  blind  or  unreflective  knowing.  Unreflec- 
tive  are  those  acts  which  we  do  merely  because  our  inborn, 
or  instinctive  nature  makes  us  sensitive  to  certain  things 
and  gives  us  ways  of  reacting  to  these  things.  For  example, 
it  is  chiefly  because  of  inborn  nature  that  we  are  seekers 
after  food,  and  fighters;  that  we  fear  darkness,  sohtude, 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  33 

loud  noises,  and  some  animals;  that  we  love  and  cherish 
the  men  with  whom  we  spend  our  Uves  and  that  we  fear 
or  dislike  the  stranger.  Unreflective  is  also  what  man 
learns  merely  by  the  trial  and  error,  the  hit  and  miss 
method,  the  method  by  which  we  learn  to  walk,  to  talk, 
to  whistle,  to  grasp,  to  handle,  and  to  throw.  Finally, 
unreflective  is  what  man  does  without  foresight  through 
imitating  other  men  or  by  mere  suggestion.  Thus,  in 
the  course  of  his  growth  from  childhood  to  manhood  man 
tends  to  adopt  blindly  as  his  own  habits  the  many  beliefs 
and  customs  of  his  clan  or  tribe.  In  short,  all  such  instinct- 
ive or  blindly  acquired  traits  constitute  a  distinctly  unre- 
flective mental  level,  a  level  in  which  more  nimierous  and 
often  more  complex  acts  are  possible  than  are  possible  for 
the  higher  brutes,  but  a  level  that  remains  animal-Uke 
rather  than  critical  and  rational  and  peculiarly  human. 

In  contrast,  the  second  level  is  genuinely  reflective 
knowledge.  Even  the  lowest  savage  does  acquire  some 
information  toward  which  he  is  critically-minded  and  which 
he  verifies.  As  a  hunter  and  a  fisherman,  as  a  maker  of 
tools  and  weapons,  as  a  builder  of  huts  and  a  kindler  of 
fire,  as  an  interested  onlooker  at  the  weather  and  seasons, 
the  savage  must  learn  and  verify  some  of  the  properties, 
the  effects,  and  the  causes  of  those  things  to  which  he  is 
obliged  to  react  not  only  skillfully  but  also  carefully  and 
thoughtfully. 

Besides  the  first  and  second  levels  of  knowledge  there 
is  a  third  level.  Let  me  call  it  speculation,  in  contrast  to 
man's  verified  knowledge.  Even  primitive  man  attends 
to  and  is  curious  about  many  things  whose  effects  and 
causes  are  not  perceived  or  readily  guessed  and  whose 
explanation  when  guessed  cannot  be  readily  tested. 
Therefore  when  he  happens  to  attend  to  things  to  which 
he  has  no  blind  and  completely  satisfactory  way  of  react- 
ing or  for  which  he  cannot  easily  acquu-e  a  verifiable  ex- 


34        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

planation,  he  may  speculate,  he  may  guess,  and  to  some 
extent  at  least  he  may  argue  out  hypotheses.  For  exam- 
ple, he  may  explain  the  storm  as  the  raging  of  a  god,  Or 
insanity  as  the  entrance  into  a  man  of  some  evil  spirit,  or 
the  power  of  an  adversary  as  the  result  of  magic. ^ 

To  cultured  moderns,  these  guesses  or  hypotheses  of 
the  primitive  thinker  may  seem  often  wild  and  childish; 
but  each  of  them  can  be  psychologically  explained  and 
presupposes  the  same  inborn  mental  nature  as  that  pos- 
sessed by  the  civilized  man  of  to-day.  In  general,  we  can 
explain  them  by  two  mental  laws,  the  law  of  analogy  and 
the  law  of  association.  The  law  of  analogy  asserts  that  in 
reacting  to  a  novel  situation  for  which  we  have  no  well 
adapted  (inborn  or  acquired)  response,  we  react  in  a  way 
which  for  our  mental  nature  (inborn  or  acquired)  happens 
to  be  most  closely  connected  with  that  situation.  Trite 
examples  of  such  responses  are  the  mistakes  of  the  country- 
man visiting  a  city  for  the  first  time.  At  dinner  he  may 
drink  out  of  the  finger  bowls.  He  may  try  to  blow  out  the 
gas  or  electric  light. ^  Granted  this  psychological  law  and 
granted  the  arising  of  some  interest  in  things  or  events 
whose  nature,  causes  or  effects  are  not  directly  perceived 
or  are  not  explained  by  traditional  beliefs,  we  should 
expect  men  to  explain  these  things  or  events  in  the  way 
in  which  they  explain  whatever  happens  to  be  for  them 
most  analogous.  The  law  of  association  asserts  that  what- 
ever we  happen  to  think  together  or  to  attend  to  together 
becomes  connected  in  our  future  thinking.  In  this  way  we 
learn    names,    vocabularies,    multiplication    tables    and 

'  Of  course  most  such  beliefs  belong  under  the  first  type,  being 
socially  and  bhndly  inherited;  and  perhaps  the  most  that  any  imagi- 
native primitive  mind  ever  does,  is  to  alter  such  beliefs  or  to  extend 
them  to  new  situations. 

2 Other  examples  are:  savages  believing  the  sails  of  a  ship  to  be 
wings,  or  believing  a  locomotive  to  be  a  horse,  or  again,  a  city  baby 
calling  the  first  cow  he  sees,  a  dog. 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  35 

poems;  and  in  this  way  we  learn  the  familiar  properties  of 
things.  Granted  that  a  man's  mental  nature  at  a  given 
time  is  thus  and  so,  it  will  often  be  none  the  less  a  psycho- 
logical accident  that  decides  what  he  happens  to  associate. 
That  is  to  say,  it  will  depend  upon  his  environment  rather 
than  upon  his  mind.  Let  us  call  such  an  association, 
an  accidental  association.  As  an  example  of  this,  our 
environment  rather  than  our  mental  nature  has  caused  us 
to  call  one  man  Doe  and  another  Roe.  Again  we  often 
associate  two  things  merely  because  we  happened  to  attend 
to  them  at  the  same  time.  The  two  things  may  be  logi- 
cally, physically  and  psychologically  unrelated  or  but 
remotely  related  and  yet  some  striking  experience  may 
henceforth  keep  them  closely  related  as  objects  of  our 
thought.  Many  superstitions  are  examples  of  this  truth. 
A  valuable  mirror  was  accidentally  broken  an  hour  before 
we  met  a  serious  misfortune,  and  our  minds  refuse  after- 
ward to  keep  the  two  events  dissociated.  In  short,  these 
two  laws,  the  law  of  analogy  and  the  law  of  association 
will  explain  most  of  the  novel  thoughts  of  primitive  and 
civilized  man;  and  to  these  novel  thoughts,  we  are 
obliged  to  trace  the  origin  of  primitive  speculation. 

However,  let  us  emphasize  again  the  important  point 
that  most  beliefs  and  customs  are  unrefiective  and  that  the 
pre-eminent  factor  explaining  the  beliefs  and  customs  of  all 
peoples  is  the  social  environment.  In  the  main  man  believes 
unreflectively  what  his  age  and  clan  believe,  he  is  interested 
in  what  interests  his  generation,  he  gets  the  intellectual 
set  of  his  mind  from  his  fellows.  Hence  it  follows  that  in 
explaining  any  belief  or  custom  of  primitive  peoples  we 
must  always  emphasize  the  part  played  by  social  tradition. 
Whatever  its  origin  may  have  been,  even  primitive  specu- 
lation is  seldom  truly  speculation  but  is  largely  group 
thought.  It  is  seldom  the  free  and  critical  thought  of 
individuals. 


36        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

It  may  help  us  if  we  give  each  of  these  types  of  knowing 
a  name.  The  unreflective  type  we  may  divide  into  (1) 
blind  trial  and  error  learning  and  (2)  blind  tradition.  The 
two  reflective  types  we  may  call  respectively  (3)  experi- 
m,ental  research,  or  investigation  and  (4)  speculation.  And 
each  of  these  types,  we  have  seen,  is  to  be  found  in  primi- 
tive belief  and  knowledge. 

3.  Primitive  verified  knowledge. — We  have  now  seen 
that  responses  to  any  environmental  situation  when  ex- 
amined as  a  knowledge  of  that  situation  may  be  divided 
into  two  types,  the  uncritical,  or  unreflective  beliefs  and 
the  critical,  or  reflective  beUefs;  and  again  that  these 
latter,  the  critical  beliefs,  may  be  divided  into  the  experi- 
mental, or  verified  beliefs  and  the  speculative,  or  unverified 
beUefs.  Though  the  unreflective,  or  uncritical  type  of 
response  is  at  the  basis  of  all  learning  and  discovery  and 
of  all  tradition,  this  type  is  essentially  primitive  and  non- 
scientific.  Hence  the  true  origin  of  science  must  be  sought 
in  the  reflective  or  critical  beliefs  of  primitive  minds,  and 
these  we  have  seen  are  from  the  beginning  of  two  types, 
the  experimental  and  the  speculative.  Thus  we  may  at 
once  infer  that  the  growth  of  these  two  types  of  knowledge 
is  especially  the  subject-matter  of  the  history  of  man's 
intellectual  enterprise. 

Let  us  consider  first  primitive  experimental  or  verified 
knowledge.  One  of  the  wonders  of  the  world  is  the  amount 
of  verified  information  man  had  before  science  began. 
Before  science  began  man  was  expert  in  making  utensils 
and  weapons  of  stone,  bone,  and  wood,  in  manufacturing 
pottery,  in  tilling  the  ground,  in  weaving  cloth,  in  mining 
and  working  metals,  in  building  canoes,  boats,  and  ships, 
in  quarrying  and  dressing  stone,  and  in  erecting  large 
buildings,  forts,  and  bridges.  He  possessed  considerable 
information  that  may  be  called  empirical  geometry, 
physics,    chemistry,    engineering,    and    medicine.      This 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  37 

immense  amount  of  prescientific  skill  should  teach  us  the 
important  truth :  the  arts  and  crafts  had  to  be  far  advanced 
before  man  could  become  a  scientist.  Indeed  our  psychologi- 
cal insight  should  convince  us  that  science  could  never 
have  arisen  until  a  vast  amount  of  empirical  information 
aroused  man's  curiosity  toward  the  abstract  and  hidden 
nature  of  the  things  and  events  with  which  he  was  ac- 
quainted, a  truth  illustrated  in  the  intellectual  growth  and 
training  of  every  child. 

This  primitive  verified  knowledge  is  more  than  the  in- 
dispensable condition  of  science.  It  is  essentially  the  seed 
out  of  which  science  has  developed.  It  is  science  in  em- 
bryo. As  such  the  refusal  to  call  it  science  is  somewhat 
arbitrary,  for  we  are  unable  to  point  out  any  specific 
boundary  between  it  and  its  later  or  scientific  stage.  Not 
altogether  arbitrary,  however,  is  our  refusal  to  call  it 
science;  for  science  differs  from  it  in  being  abstract  and 
general.  Science  is  essentially  made  up  of  universal 
propositions;  whereas  primitive  verified  knowledge  is  es- 
sentially particular  and  concrete.  To  employ  a  very  im- 
portant illustration :  we  may  use  a  lever  skillfully  but  may 
not  yet  have  discovered  the  general  truths  of  the  lever. 
Or  we  may  invent  the  wheel  and  employ  it  on  a  cart 
without  having  discovered  that  the  wheel  is  a  lever  and 
that  its  merits  depend  upon  the  properties  of  the  lever. 
In  short,  the  typical  lever,  the  wheel,  and  the  balance  scale 
may  all  be  known  to  us,  but  to  the  lever  in  the  abstract 
and  to  its  general  properties  we  may  be  completely  blind. 
But  even  if  we  decide  that  science  is  to  be  distinguished  by 
its  generality  and  abstractness,  we  have  to  admit  that  the 
stages  from  the  particular  and  the  concrete  to  the  general 
and  the  abstract  are  continuous,  so  genuinely  continuous 
that  any  specific  boundary  Hne  seems  arbitrary.  None 
the  less  both  convenience  and  convention  justify  our  re- 
fusing to  call  primitive  verified  knowledge  science.    It  is 


38        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

prescience.  It  is  not  sufficiently  general  and  abstract  to 
be  science.  It  is  not  argumentative  or  ratiocinative.  Its 
judgments  are  not  explicitly  generalizations,  and  its  veri- 
fication is  not  expUcithj  proof  or  logical  deduction. 

4.  Primitive  speculative  knowledge. — As  primitive 
verified  knowledge  is  a  parent  of  science  so  also  is  primitive 
speculative  knowledge.  Indeed,  much  of  man's  primitive 
speculation  betrays  the  very  essence  of  science;  for  it  tends 
to  be  abstract  and  general,  even  though  lacking  the  other 
essential  trait  of  science,  verification.  Again,  as  abstract 
and  general  it  comes  nearer  to  being  scientific  in  spirit 
than  does  the  concrete  verified  knowledge;  for  its  motive 
is  explicitly  an  endeavor  to  explain.  Finally,  no  matter 
how  childish,  it  has  the  merit  of  being  the  result  of  wonder 
and  curiosity.  For  these  three  reasons  primitive  specula- 
tion deserves  extended  study  by  the  student  of  man's 
intellectual  history. 

Without  attempting  to  define  the  terms  rigorously  and 
of  course  without  assuming  that  the  classes  denoted  by 
these  terms  are  mutually  exclusive,  I  shall  for  convenience 
sum  up  man's  primitive  unverified  beliefs,  whether  unre- 
flective  or  speculative,  under  the  three  headings,  magic, 
animism,  and  myth} 

^  The  three  terms  are  here  used  purposely  in  a  vague,  generic  and 
non-technical  sense.  For  example,  under  animism  I  wish  to  include 
animatism,  supernaturalism  (Marett)  or  dynamism  (Leuba),  and 
totemism.  Under  magic  I  include  taboo,  or  negative  magic,  and 
fetishism.  For  a  more  detailed  and  technical  discussion  of  various 
primitive  beliefs  and  customs  the  student  should  consult  the  works 
recommended  for  further  reading.  Moreover,  in  this  chapter  we  are 
studying  not  the  beliefs  and  customs  of  any  one  people  but  rather 
the  general  tendencies  found  among  many  different  peoples.  Finally, 
primitive  behef  is  grou-p  custom  rather  than  belief,  that  is,  it  is  nearly 
thoughtless.  As  a  consequence,  however  sharply  one  can  define  types 
of  customs,  it  remains  doubtful  if  one  can  define  sharply  difi'erent 
beUefs  without  reading  into  them  distinctions  which  belong  to  far 
more  advanced  thinking.    In  short,  primitive  thought  is  essentially 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  39 

(a)  Magic. — It  is  doubtful  if  magic,  in  the  broad  sense 
in  which  I  wish  to  use  the  word,  can  be  rigorously  defined; 
for  I  desire  to  include  within  this  class  an  array  of  beliefs 
and  customs  varying  in  different  lands  and  varying  some- 
times widely  one  from  another.  These  customs  vary  from 
the  most  childish  superstitions  to  thoughtful  and  critical 
beliefs,  and  therefore  from  the  most  blind  and  casual  as- 
sociations to  beliefs  which  reveal  a  genuine  theory  under- 
lying them  logically.  Let  me  illustrate.  On  the  one  hand, 
a  boy  may  carry  a  certain  pebble  in  his  pocket  because  of 
some  vague  feeling  that  it  will  bring  him  good  luck,  though 
he  may  not  have  or  seek  any  ground  whatever  to  explain 
how  it  can  have  this  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  we  may 
find  primitive  medical  beliefs  and  customs  based  upon 
explicit  principles  such  as  "like  cures  like,"  "strength  can 
pass  from  the  well  and  strong  to  the  weak  and  sick." 

Magic  seems  always  to  have  played  a  large  part  in 
human  life  as  it  still  does  even  in  civilized  communities. 
There  are  the  multitudinous  taboos  of  the  savage ;  but  the 
civilized  also  have  their  numerous  taboos,  such  as  the 
popular  feeling  which,  even  in  cities  of  wealth  and  culture, 
compels  the  hotel  and  apartment-house  proprietors  to 
avoid  numbering  any  suite  "thirteen,"  or  again  such  as 
the  fear  felt  as  we  brag  about  good  health.  There  are 
witchcraft  and  the  arts  of  the  magician  from  time  im- 
memorial, and  there  are  to-day  the  fortune  teller,  the 
clairvoyant,  the  professional  mind-reader,  the  charlatan, 
and  the  medically  expert  grandmother  whose  opinions 
rule  though  they  conflict  with  explicit  orders  of  the  family 
physician.  There  are  the  wonder-working  foods,  drugs, 
images,  lamps,  and  other  natural  and  artificial  objects  of 
ancient  life  made  familiar  to  us  in  the  fairy  stories  so  dearly 

social,  childlike  and  non-technical.  Hence  in  discussing  primitive 
thought  some  advantage  is  to  be  got  by  using  a  few  generic  terms 
rather  than  several  specific  and  more  precise  notions. 


40        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

loved  in  childhood,  and  we  have  with  us  still  in  our  metro- 
pohtan  cities  wonder-working  relics,  marvellous  patent 
medicines  and  foods,  and  a  host  of  minor  superstitions 
such  as  throwing  rice  at  the  departing  bride  and  giving 
the  playing  cards  an  extra  cut  for  good  luck. 

Does  any  thought  or  principle  underiie  such  beliefs  and 
customs?  ''Often  none  whatsoever,"  must  be  our  answer 
if  this  question  asks  regarding  the  origin  of  magic  and  the 
psychological  factors  at  work  therein.  However,  the  ex- 
tensive belief  and  practice  of  magic  probably  did  now  and 
then  tend  to  awaken  in  the  minds  of  primitive  and  barbaric 
peoples  a  general  belief  even  though  a  vague  behef,  which 
we  may  call  "the  principle  implicit  in  magic."  This  prin- 
ciple is  a  theory  of  causation.  It  asserts  that  things  can 
have  a  more  or  less  hidden  power,  or  efficacy  which  we 
moderns  would  call  non-mechanical.  Perhaps  this  can  be 
illustrated  best  by  the  feelings  ignorant  people  to-day 
have  toward  magnets,  wireless  telegraphy,  dynamite, 
poisonous  drugs,  hypnotism,  "personal  magnetism,"  "will 
power,"  and  similar  instances  of  mysterious  causal  proc- 
esses. This  belief  in  hidden  powers,  or  efficacies  has 
from  prehistoric  days  to  our  own  been  a  part  of  popular 
philosophy  and  indeed  has  only  in  recent  centuries  been 
disappearing  even  from  scientific  thought. 

Scholars  are  by  no  means  agreed  as  to  the  origin  of 
magic.  Though  many  environmental  agents  may  have 
been  the  actual  stimuli  to  arouse  such  behefs,  the  psycho- 
logical aptitude  of  man  for  these  beliefs  is  apparent  in 
every  child  and  in  every  ignorant  adult.  The  absence  of 
behefs  that  in  the  cultured  inhibit  such  superstitions  leaves 
man's  inborn  nature  open  to  the  crudest  and  most  acci- 
dental associations  and  analogies  and  open  also  to  the 
suggestions  of  the  group  mind.  And  our  inborn  mental 
nature  is  itself  especially  susceptible  to  such  beliefs,  with 
its  many  instinctive  fears,  with  its  desires  to  lord  it  over 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  41 

others,  with  its  submissiveness  to  the  impressive  stranger, 
with  its  sexual  instincts,  and  with  its  varied  emotional 
responses.^ 

(b)  Animism. — The  second  type  of  primitive  specula- 
tive knowledge  is  animism.  To  most  primitive  thinkers 
almost  everything  seems  to  be  ahve  and  to  many  primitive 
thinkers  almost  everything  seems  to  have  a  soul.  In  the 
latter  case  having  a  soul  makes  them  alive.  But  in  be- 
lieving things  to  be  alive  the  primitive  thinker  has  not 
the  critical  and  precise  notion  of  life  which  the  modern 
biologist  entertains.  To  be  aUve  means  to  move  one's 
parts  or  members,  to  do  things,  to  change  or  transform 
oneself,  to  go  from  place  to  place,  to  have  offspring.  Such 
even  to-day  is  life  as  conceived  by  children  and  by  the  ig- 
norant. If  these  are  criteria  of  hfe,  then  the  sun,  moon, 
and  stars,  the  clouds,  the  wind,  the  storm,  the  ocean,  the 
brooks  and  rivers,  the  soil  as  the  seeming  mother  of  plant, 
insect,  and  reptile,  are  one  and  all  as  truly  aUve  as  are 
what  we  call  animals  and  plants.  Moreover,  precisely  as 
the  ignorant  man  of  to-day  accepts  naively  the  presence 
of  Hfe  as  a  thoroughly  sufficient  explanation  of  motion, 
change,  growth  and  reproduction  in  animals  and  plants; 
so  the  primitive  thinker  accepts  hfe  also  as  the  explanation 
of  the  motions,  the  changes,  and  the  coming  into  being 
of  virtually  everything.  Thus  if  the  moon  is  alive,  of 
course  it  moves  and  hides.  If  the  earth  is  ahve,  of  course 
it  brings  forth.  If  the  storm  is  ahve,  of  course  it  rages  and 
destroys.  If  the  sun  is  alive,  may  not  the  stars  be  its 
offspring? 

But  things  have  often  a  soul  also.    Here  again  we  must 

*  The  problem  of  the  origins  of  magic  takes  us  back  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  history  and  our  ignorance  of  the  actual  origins  is  extreme. 
The  subject  is  too  vast  and  the  differences  of  opinion  are  too  many 
even  to  be  summarized  in  this  book.  Such  a  summary  the  student 
can  secure  in  the  books  referred  to  below. 


42         THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

not  ascribe  to  the  primitive  thinker  the  notion  of  the  soul 
as  conceived  by  more  critical  thinkers,  rather  we  should 
try  to  imagine  the  soul  as  conceived  by  children  and  the 
ignorant.  It  is  a  second  sort  of  person,  a  man's  double. 
It  is  a  sort  of  body.  It  can  at  times  be  seen  and  can  wear 
clothing.  It  can  talk,  and  do  many  things  our  bodies  can 
do.  Yet  it  is  also  markedly  different  from  our  bodies. 
It  is  often  invisible,  it  can  go  through  obstacles  impene- 
trable to  the  body,  it  can  travel  with  great  rapidity  and  to 
places  to  which  the  body  cannot  go.  It  is  less  tangible, 
less  solid  than  many  objects,  being  Hke  breath,  bodily 
warmth  or  a  shadow.  Hence  the  very  names,  anima, 
psyche,  ghost,  soul,  wraith,  shade,  spirit. 

Many  experiences  could  have  given  rise  to  the  belief 
in  such  an  entity  as  the  soul.  In  the  first  place,  we  know 
that  young  children  and  primitive  men  do  not  distinguish 
between  dream  experience  and  that  of  waking  life.  Ob- 
jects and  events  in  the  dream  are  believed  to  be  present 
in  the  same  way  as  they  are  to  sense  perception.  Hence, 
since  in  their  dreams  they  see  and  talk  with  the  dead, 
the  belief  naturally  follows  that  the  latter  must  still  be 
alive  and  be  able  to  travel  back  to  them  and  to  enter  even 
the  most  securely  fastened  abode.  The  living  too  in  their 
dreams  can  gain  exit  from  closed  abodes,  can  travel  far, 
can  hunt  with  the  dead.  In  the  second  place,  the  phe- 
nomena of  death,  insanity,  mania,  trance,  delirium,  hys- 
teria, and  even  falKng  to  sleep,  and  awaking  from  sleep 
suggest  as  their  explanation  the  departure  or  return  of 
some  such  entity  as  the  soul  from  or  to  the  body,  or  the  ar- 
rival and  entrance  into  the  body  of  a  foreign  soul,  friendly 
or  hostile  as  the  case  may  indicate.  In  the  third  place, 
many  other  experiences  may  have  played  a  part  in  arous- 
ing the  belief  in  souls,  for  example,  anger  and  its  regretted 
deeds,  unusual  strength,  unusual  obstacles  or  accidents 
to  man's  enterprises,  echoes  and  other  unexplained  noises 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  43 

in  nature,  or  the  sudden  and  unexpected  appearance  and 
disappearance  of  wild  beasts  and  birds.  But  all  of  these 
explanations  of  the  origin  of  animism  may  be  converting 
cause  and  effect.  Once  in  existence  animism  would  be  a 
probable  and  satisfying  way  of  explaining  such  facts  and 
yet  these  facts  may  have  had  little  to  do  with  the  actual 
origin  of  the  hypothesis.  Animism  may  have  been  of 
group  origin  and  far  less  rational.  Thus  its  origin  may 
have  been  totemism.  That  is  to  say,  the  soul  is  the  totem 
or  a  piece  of  the  totem  in  each  member  of  the  clan,  be  this 
member  a  man,  an  animal  or  any  other  object.  For  ex- 
ample, if  the  totem  of  the  clan  is  the  kangaroo  every  object 
that  belongs  to  the  clan  has  the  "nature"  of  the  kangaroo 
in  him  or  it.  This  something,  or  nature,  is  then  the  origi- 
nal soul.^ 

Once  present,  the  beUef  in  souls  can  lead  the  prunitive 
thinker  to  ascribe  souls  to  every  object  that  he  judges  to 
be  alive,  and  it  helps  him  explain  many  things  besides 
those  things,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  to  explain 
which  the  belief  originated.  Indeed,  it  explains  why  things 
are  alive  and  also  why  they  seem  sometimes  to  be  asleep 
or  dead.  It  explains  sickness,  epidemics,  insanity,  epi- 
lepsy, and  magical  and  religious  powers.  It  explains  why 
events  in  nature  seem  to  us  often  to  have  an  emotional 
and  personal  trait;  for  nature  seems  to  punish  us,  to  fight 
us,  to  hate  us,  to  smile  upon  us,  or  to  befriend  us.  The 
storm  rages,  springtime  is  merry  and  benign,  wild  beasts 
are  enemies  or  friends.  Once  things  are  thought  to  have 
souls,  and  especially  such  things  as  are  man's  constant 
companions,  the  sky,  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  ocean,  the 
earth,  the  storm,  the  neighboring  mountain,  and  many 
other  things,  the  soul  in  them  may  gradually  become 
somewhat  dissociated  from  the  things  themselves  which 

1  Here  again  our  ignorance  is  extreme  and  the  opinions  of  scholars 
differ. 


44        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

these  souls  inhabit.  This  is  probably  at  least  one  factor 
that  brought  about  the  belief  in  spooks,  nymphs,  demons 
and  gods  as  distinct  persons,  persons  that  can  be  pictured, 
named,  persons  that  have  a  character  and  a  biography. 
Hence  in  time  came  the  polytheism  such  as  we  find  in 
classical  Greece,  a  polytheism  with  all  the  marks  and 
associations  of  its  primitive  totemistic  and  animistic 
origin. 

Animism,  like  magic,  has  been  from  prehistoric  times  a 
most  important  part  of  popular  philosophy,  and  has  never 
been  thoroughly  eliminated  even  from  scientific  thought. 
Like  magic  it  has  been  an  important  element  throughout 
history  in  the  conception  of  causation,  and  has  been  so 
not  only  in  so-called  superstitions  but  also  in  scientific 
beliefs.  Let  me  illustrate.  The  soul  and  its  powers  and 
faculties  have  always  been  a  part  of  popular  psychological 
explanation.  Indeed,  few  even  professional  psychologists 
quite  escape  animism.  The  soul's  departure  from  the 
body  has  always  been  the  popularly  received  explanation 
of  death.  Life  has  always  seemed  to  the  ignorant  and, 
until  recent  centuries,  even  to  the  biologist,  the  working 
of  a  special  hidden  agent,  the  soul  or  "the  vital  principle." 
Even  the  things  and  events  under  study  in  chemistry  and 
physics  have  been  very  slow  in  getting  explained  non- 
animistically,  for  "substances"  and  "forces"  are  more 
or  less  animistic  entities;  that  is,  they  are  agents  with 
mysterious  powers,  and  they  are  ultimates  which  them- 
selves seem  to  us  to  require  either  no  explanation  or  less 
explanation  than  do  the  entities  or  processes  which  we 
explain  through  them.  For  example,  how  natural  for  us 
it  still  is  to  think  of  electricity  as  a  power,  an  agent,  a 
doer,  a  sort  of  spook. 

(c)  Myth. — Myth,  the  third  type  of  primitive  belief  or 
speculation,  usually  presupposes  the  other  two,  magic  and 
animism;  but  myth  is  closer  to  being  expKcitly  a  theory 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  45 

than  are  they.  A  myth  is  a  story  or  yam  used  intention- 
ally to  explain  some  thing,  event,  belief,  or  custom ;  for  its 
very  function  is  not  to  interest  but  to  explain,  and  by  this 
it  differentiates  itself  from  other  stories.  As  an  explana- 
tion it  is  perhaps  the  clearest  instance  of  what  we  have 
called  a  response  by  analogy.  The  inventor  of  the  myth, 
be  this  inventor  the  group  mind  or  some  individual  man, 
in  his  ignorance  of  the  true  explanation  of  the  objects  or 
events  in  whose  origin  he  is  interested,  readily  explains 
their  origin  after  the  analogy  of  that  with  which  he  is  best 
acquainted,  namely,  human  life  and  conduct  as  under- 
stood by  primitive  thought.  To  illustrate:  the  myth 
maker  often  explains  the  origin  of  things  after  the  analogy 
of  human  birth.  To  him  the  stars  may  be  the  offspring 
of  the  sun  and  moon.  Again,  whatever  in  nature  suggests 
to  him  human  plans  and  emotions  readily  gets  interpreted 
by  a  myth.  Finally,  the  actual  origin  of  the  tribe,  the 
origin  of  its  customs  and  industries,  and  in  particular  the 
origin  of  its  religious  ritual  are  matters  completely  for- 
gotten by  primitive  peoples;  but  they  are  matters  which 
readily  suggest  some  analogy  to  things  better  known  and 
accordingly  are  explained  by  a  myth.^ 

Among  the  myths  which  interest  especially  the  historian 
of  philosophy  are  the  ancient  cosmogonies,  and  in  particu- 
lar, those  found  among  the  ancient  peoples  of  India,  Baby- 
lonia, Egypt,  and  Greece.  They  suggest  the  wonder  of  the 
primitive  thinker  at  the  world  about  him  as  he  saw  it  and 
knew  it,  and  they  foretell  the  coming  of  the  time  when 
man  was  to  find  a  better  way  of  satisfying  his  curiosity 
than  by  inventing  stories.  Moreover,  these  cosmogonies 
are  distinctly  instances  of  explaining  nature  by  means  of 

^  Once  in  existence  the  myth  may  be  handed  on  from  people  to 
people,  and  from  generation  to  generation  with  comparatively  slight 
changes  or  additions  until  it  reaches  the  hoary  age  of  many  of  the 
most  famous  myths. 


46        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

analogies  and  as  such  represent  one  of  the  most  inveterate 
philosophical  habits  of  man.  Indeed,  man  has  been  out- 
growing myth-making  very  slowly;  and  the  great  majority 
of  people  in  civilized  lands  to-day  still  explain  the  origin 
of  nature  and  of  man  by  myths  and  still  interpret  the 
phenomena  of  nature  after  the  analogy  of  human  plans 
and  purposes.  Only  as  we  become  well  informed  in  physi- 
cal and  biological  sciences  and  only  as  we  acquire  habits 
of  seeking  explanations  of  nature's  events  in  terms  of  the 
propositions  of  these  sciences,  do  we  outgrow  the  childlike 
intellectual  satisfaction  given  by  myths  and  other  human 
analogies.  In  short,  we  all  feel  much  more  at  home  in 
nature  when  we  can  explain  nature  and  our  place  in  nature 
in  terms  of  human  conduct,  human  interests  and  human 
emotions;  that  is,  we  still  feel  so,  provided  we  can  find  a 
myth  sufficiently  consistent  and  ingenious  not  to  arouse 
our  intellectual  scruples, 

5.  The  influence  of  social  organization. — A  further 
trait  of  primitive  thought  is  emphasized  by  some  sociol- 
ogists. This  is  the  influence  of  the  tribal  social  organiza- 
tion upon  man's  philosophy  of  life  and  of  the  world  about 
him.  For  example,  a  monarchical  society  is  liable  to  think 
of  the  world  as  a  sort  of  monarchy;  and  a  group  of  tribes 
with  fixed  boundaries  between  territories  that  no  one  may 
transgress  without  dire  punishment,  may  think  of  the 
universe  in  similar  fashion,  as  a  system  of  realms  with 
harmony  kept  between  them  by  a  sort  of  omnipotent 
world  custom.  Psychologically,  of  course,  this  trait  is  to 
be  explained  as  a  response  by  analogy;  and  in  particular 
it  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  social  organization 
of  a  primitive  man's  tribe  is  the  most  general  or  universal 
organization  with  which  he  is  acquainted.  Hence  when  he 
reflects  regarding  the  physical  environment  and  its  order, 
he  interprets  them  in  terms  of  the  only  system  he  knows 
which  seems  commensurate.     One  of  the  most  familiar 


PRIMITIVE  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THOUGHT  47 

instances  of  this  analogy  is  the  medieval  conception  of 
the  world,  reflecting  the  political  and  ecclesiastical  hier- 
archy in  the  days  of  feudalism  and  papal  supremacy. 
Europe  was  organized  through  feudahsm  and  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  pope  like  a  vast  ladder  reaching  from  pope  to 
serf;  and  correspondingly  the  world  was  conceived  as  a 
similar  ladder  reaching  from  God  through  the  angels  and 
the  church  down  to  man  and  to  nature  below  man.  An- 
other example  is  to  be  found  among  some  peoples  of  Aus- 
tralia, who  divide  what  we  call  nature  or  the  universe  into 
the  same  totemistic  or  clan  groups  as  those  into  which  their 
tribe  is  divided.  In  other  words,  man's  first  classification 
of  all  things,  man's  first  list  of  categories,  man's  first 
general  philosophy  may  have  been  a  mere  reflection  of  the 
tribal  organization. 

6.  Conclusion. — We  have  now  studied  in  briefest  and 
most  general  outline,  the  story  of  primitive  thought.  In 
the  first  place,  this  study  tells  from  what  science  has 
grown.  Science  has  grown  from  two  primitive  types  of 
knowledge,  first  from  the  thoughtful  skill,  or  so-called 
empirical  wisdom,  such  as  that  of  the  practical  builder  or 
machinist,  and  second  from  the  unverified  speculations  or 
naive  theories,  such  as  the  animistic  myths.  In  the  second 
place,  primitive  thought  reveals  in  contrast  to  itself  some 
of  the  essential  attributes  of  scientific  thought.  In  con- 
trast to  practical  or  empirical  wisdom,  science  is  general 
and  abstract.  Prescientific  skill  is  a  knowledge  of  concrete 
particular  things  or  situations ;  whereas  science  is  a  knowl- 
edge of  universals  of  which  the  particular  things  are  ex- 
amples or  instances.  In  contrast  to  unverified  and  naive 
speculation,  science  is  a  critical  research  or  investigation 
followed  by  verification.  The  business  of  science  is  to 
discover  facts,  to  explain  them  and  to  demonstrate  or 
verify  the  explanation. 


48         THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  further  study  read: 

Clodd,  E.,  Animism,  1905; 

Haddon,  A.  C,  Magic  and  Fetishism,  1910; 

Thomas,  W.  I.,  Som-ce  Booli  for  Social  Origins,  651-735; 

Lang,  A.,  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  1899; 

Encycl.  Brit.,  Uth  ed.,  arts.  Magic,  Animism  and  Mythol- 
ogy; 

Encycl.  of  Religion  and  Ethics  (Hastings),  art.  Magic. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Jevons,  F.  B.,  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  1902; 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  The  Religions  of  Primitive  Peoples,  1897; 

Marett,  R.  R.,  Threshold  of  Religion,  1914; 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  Researches  into  the  Early  History  of  Man- 
kind and  the  Development  of  Civilization,  1878; 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  Primitive  Culture,  1903; 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  The  Golden  Bough,  3d  ed.; 

Allen,  G.,  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  1897; 

Davenport,  F.  M.,  Primitive  Traits  in  Religious  Revivals, 
1905; 

Smith,  W.  R.,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1894; 

Him,  Y.,  The  Origins  of  Art,  1900; 

Reinach,  S.,  Cultes,  Mythes  et  Religions,  1905; 

Durkheim  (transl.  Swain),  The  Elementary  Forms  of  the 
Religious  Life,  1915; 

Spencer  and  Gillen,  The  Native  Tribes  of  Central  Aus- 
tralia, 1899; 

Clodd,  E.,  Tom  Tit  Tot;  an  Essay  on  Savage  Philosophy 
in  Folktale,  1898; 

Hartland,  E.  S.,  The  Legend  of  Perseus,  1894-6; 

Crawley,  E.,  The  Mystic  Rose,  1902;  The  Tree  of  Life, 
1905;  The  Idea  of  the  Soul,  1909; 

Gomme,  G.  L.,  Ethnology  in  Folklore,  1892; 

Rivers,  W.  H.  R.,  The  Todas,  1906. 


CHAPTER  V 

FROM   PRIMITIVE  THOUGHT  TO   SCIENCE 

1.  Introductory. — The  historical  evolution  from  prim- 
itive belief  and  custom  to  science  has  been  long  and  diffi- 
cult. As  we  have  seen,  no  people  has  really  completed 
this  evolution  and  few  nations  have  ever  of  themselves 
reached  a  point  where  the  scientific  enterprise  is  deliber- 
ately undertaken.  And  even  where  they  have  reached  this 
point,  only  the  intellectual  leaders  have  reached  it,  not  the 
people  as  a  whole.  Nay  rather  the  intellectual  enterprise 
has  always  met  resistance  from  the  folk  or  the  conservative 
many ;  and  as  a  consequence,  wherever  science  has  appeared 
some  conflict  has  always  arisen  between  it  and  the  older 
belief  and  custom.  Moreover,  the  way  upward  has  been 
not  only  difficult,  but  also  long,  long  even  for  the  most 
intellectually  gifted  leaders;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  primitive 
belief  and  custom  had  to  undergo  an  extensive  develop- 
ment upward  before  science  could  even  begin,  and  after 
science  had  begun  the  old  behefs  and  customs  continued 
to  exist  interacting  with  and  influencing  the  new  beliefs. 
This  development  of  primitive  belief  and  custom  upward 
toward  science,  its  influence  upon  science  and  its  conflict 
with  science  are  the  subject-matter  of  the  present  chapter. 

2.  Primitive  custom  and  religion. — It  is  desirable  to 
introduce  at  this  point  into  our  discussion  the  word  re- 
ligion as  a  technical  term.  This  word  as  at  present  used 
is  highly  ambiguous.  It  is  used  by  many  historians  to 
denote  virtually  the  sum  total  of  the  beUefs  and  customs 
of  primitive  peoples  as  well  as  to  denote  certain  related 

49 


50        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

beliefs  and  customs  in  every  stage  of  civilization  up  to  the 
very  highest.  On  the  one  hand,  this  usage  is  justified  by 
the  continuity  in  evolution  between  the  lowest  beliefs  and 
customs  and  the  highest  religion;  yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
primitive  beliefs  and  customs  are  the  parents  not  only  of 
the  higher  religions  but  also  of  art,  of  science  and  indeed 
of  every  phase  of  civilized  life  and  experience.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  evolution  is  a  process  in  which  the  parent  gives 
birth  to  diverging  or  differentiating  offspring.^  Accord- 
ingly let  us  not  call  the  genuinely  primitive  beliefs  and  cus- 
toms religion  but  the  parents  of  both  religion  and  science. 
And  though  admitting  a  complete  developmental  conti- 
nuity and  a  closer  likeness  between  primitive  customs  and 
religion,  let  us  regard  religion  as  a  later  stage  in  human 
evolution,  a  stage,  it  is  true,  which  precedes  science  but 
also  a  stage  which  continues  to  live  along  with  science,  in 
part  as  the  rival  of  science  and  in  part  as  a  necessary  com- 
plement to  science  in  the  complete  hfe  of  man.  Let  us 
first  study  briefly  religion,  this  earher  offspring  of  primitive 
belief  and  custom. 

3.  National  and  international  religions. — The  social 
amalgamation  of  earlier  tribes  and  clans  into  city-states 
or  into  nations,  best  exemplified  for  us  in  the  history  of 
Israel,  Greece,  and  Rome,  has  usually  had  as  one  of  its 
consequences  a  marked  advance  in  primitive  thought. 
It  has  tended,  though  not  always  successfully,  to  trans- 
form diverging  local  cults  and  worships  into  great  national 
religions,  and  these  religions  have  tended  to  be  intellec- 
tually and  morally  superior  to  the  earlier  local  beliefs  and 
customs.    This  advance  is  due  to  a  number  of  factors,  the 

*  For  example,  in  the  higher  vertebrate  series  the  ancient  reptile 
was  the  parent  not  only  of  the  birds  but  also  of  the  mammals,  and 
let  us  not  forget,  the  parent  also  of  the  recent  reptiles  who  may 
illustrate  for  us  the  non-progressive  or  conservative  type  usually 
to  be  found  in  every  evolving  series. 


FROM  PRIMITIVE  THOUGHT  TO  SCIENCE         51 

chief  of  which  we  may  call  generahzation.  For  example, 
many  local  deities  may  be  identified  and  thus  may  become 
a  common  national  deity.  Many  diverging  local  cults  and 
rites  may  be  succeeded  by  a  national  ritual  of  the  city 
temple  under  the  control  of  a  priestly  class.  Again,  many 
diverging  magical  practices  and  taboos  and  many  other 
social  customs  may  be  supplanted  or  generalized  by  be- 
coming a  national  standardized  system  of  customs  and 
laws.  This  process  of  nationaUzing  local  customs  and 
beliefs  must  often  have  led  the  intellectual  men  to  criticise 
and  to  outgrow  the  savagery  and  the  inconsistencies  of  the 
older  order.  Moreover,  it  must  have  suggested  the  new 
problems  and  the  new  thoughts  that  led  to  the  higher 
conceptions  and  nobler  ideals  actually  to  be  found  in  the 
great  national  religions. 

Besides  nationalizing  and  generalizing  reUgion,  the 
socializing  of  the  people  that  takes  place  when  tribes  are 
united  into  nations  and  nations  into  empires  produces 
other  important  effects  upon  religion.  The  very  socializing 
of  the  people  raises  their  morals  and  laws  beyond  the  crude 
and  narrow  customs  of  the  clan  or  village.  Indeed  it  tends 
to  transform  customs  into  morals.  It  tends  to  transform 
blind  obedience  to  the  group  mind  into  thoughtful  and 
critical  social  behavior,  for  it  breaks  the  rigid  rule  of  local 
customs  and  gives  man  a  new  social  world  with  new  social 
laws  and  larger  social  interests.  And,  remember,  as  are 
people  so  are  their  gods.  The  gods  become  the  gods  of 
justice  and  humanity,  the  gods  not  only  of  the  clansmen 
but  of  the  stranger,  the  gods  not  only  of  the  nation  but  of 
mankind.  Moreover,  a  corresponding  tendency  arises, 
a  tendency  to  outgrow  the  savage  myths  and  crude  ritual 
of  the  earlier  local  religion  and  to  idealize  the  life  and 
character  of  the  gods.  Both  of  these  facts  are  evident 
in  the  writings  of  the  Jewish  prophets  and  in  the  Greek 
poets  and  dramatists  of  the  golden  age. 


52        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Again,  the  socializing  and  nationalizing  of  religion  is 
correlated  with  a  great  economic  and  political  advance  of 
society.  Empire  building  brings  greater  wealth  and  eco- 
nomic stabiUty  and  the  disappearance  of  petty  and  local 
wars.  This  advance  in  turn  influences  religion.  Man  feels 
less  dependent  upon  his  gods  and  more  dependent  upon 
society  for  his  prosperity,  and  therefore  the  crude  and 
savage  magic  by  which  he  once  won  his  wealth  and  his 
wars  tends  to  disappear.  New  needs  for  the  gods  take  the 
place  of  the  old  needs,  for  now  the  gods  are  needed  rather 
as  the  defenders  and  protectors  of  social  justice  and  hu- 
manitarianism.  Man  now  begins  to  need  a  god  of  right- 
eousness, a  god  that  protects  the  weak  and  the  lowly,  a 
god  that  is  not  served  by  magic  and  sacrifice  but  by  doing 
justly,  by  walking  humbly  and  by  a  contrite  heart. 

Finally,  universalizing  the  local  into  national  and  inter- 
national gods  tends  to  dissociate  the  gods  from  the  crude 
totemism  and  other  local  characteristics  of  primitive  re- 
ligion. That  is,  it  makes  the  gods  more  abstract,  more 
distant,  less  anthropomorphic,  and  it  tends  toward  mono- 
theism. God  no  longer  dwells  in  temples  made  with  hands, 
God  no  longer  thinks  and  does  as  man  does.  God  no 
longer  can  be  pictured  in  the  crude  forms  of  earlier  thought, 
for  he  transcends  the  images  and  pictures  of  man's  think- 
ing.   In  short,  God  becomes  inscrutable  and  transcendent. 

Unfortunately  the  story  of  the  rise  of  the  great  national 
religions  of  ancient  civilization  out  of  the  prehistoric  and 
primitive  behefs  and  customs  is  still  largely  unknown.  It 
is  unknown  because  it  preceded  for  the  greater  part  the 
days  of  historical  records.  Consequently  our  efforts  to 
reconstruct  the  story  from  the  monuments  and  the  ves- 
tiges of  the  older  epoch  surviving  in  the  later  epoch  is  of 
necessity  tentative  and  full  of  mere  conjecture.  However, 
historical  and  anthropological  research  during  recent 
decades  has  let  a  flood  of  light  into  what  was  previously 


FROM  PRIMITIVE  THOUGHT  TO  SCIENCE         53 

a  realm  of  almost  complete  darkness.  If  little  is  known  of 
the  actual  details  and  sometimes  little  even  of  the  main 
outlines  of  these  ancient  evolutions,  modern  scholars  are 
agreed  regarding  at  least  a  few  general  propositions. 
Every  great  national  religion  evolved  by  stages,  admitting 
always  of  a  psychological  and  sociological  explanation, 
from  local  and  often  exceeding  primitive  beliefs  and  cus- 
toms. This  evolution  was  due  to  and  its  pathway  was  de- 
termined by  two  factors,  the  behefs  and  customs  from 
which  it  started  and  new  environmental  agents.  These 
environmental  agents  can  be  of  many  different  sorts. 
Sometimes  they  are  peculiar  to  the  particular  people;  and 
sometimes  they  are  of  world-wide  influence,  as  the  life  and 
thought  of  one  nation  interacts  with  the  life  and  thought 
of  other  nations.  At  times  national  disaster,  and  at  times 
economic,  social  and  political  progress  are  important 
factors.  Each  of  these  factors  should  be  illustrated. 
Every  religion  and  markedly  the  ancient  religions  ex- 
hibit vestiges  of  the  primitive  customs  from  which  they 
are  descended.  The  gods  and  demigods,  the  festivals 
and  fast  days,  the  sacrifices  and  sacraments,  the  rit- 
ual and  ceremonies,  the  priestly  class,  the  command- 
ments or  religious  laws  and  taboos,  one  and  all  can 
be  traced  to  much  older  days  when  they,  or  the  beliefs 
and  customs  of  which  they  are  vestiges,  belonged  to  some 
savage  local  cult.  Some  cults  seem  to  be  genuine  descend- 
ants of  the  older  local  religion ;  but  in  the  ancient  Eastern 
Mediterranean  world  is  to  be  found  evidence  of  widespread 
religious  influence  from  people  to  people.  In  later  days,  the 
days  of  recorded  history,  the  influence  of  oriental  religions 
upon  Greek  and  Roman  religions  was  widespread.  Evi- 
dently the  religion  of  Israel  was  influenced  by  national 
disaster  and  by  political  bondage.  Finally,  in  modem  his- 
tory we  have  a  familiar  instance  of  the  effects  of  economic, 
social  and  political  progress  upon  religion.    The  protestant 


54        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

reformation  had  evidently  behind  it  the  great  social,  po- 
litical and  economic  changes  that  brought  modern  Europe 
into  existence. 

F(yr  further  study  read: 

Carpenter,  J.  E.,  Comparative  Religion  (Home  University 

Library) ; 
Encycl.  Brit.,  11th.  ed.,  arts.  Religion,  Greek  Religion,  and 

Hebrew  Religion; 
Murray,  G.,  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  1912,  15-99; 
Cornford,  F.  M.,  From  Religion  to  Philosophy,  1912,  73-122. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Adam,  J.,  The  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  1909; 
Campbell,  L.,  Rehgion  in  Greek  Literature,  1898; 
Ducharme,  La  Critique  des  traditions  religieuses  chez  les 

Grecs,  1904; 
Harrison,  J.,  Prolegomena  to  the  Study  of  Greek  Religion, 

1908; 
Hawes,  C,  H.,  and  H.  B.,  Crete,  the  Forerunner  of  Greece, 

1911; 
Hogarth,  D.  G.,  Ionia  and  the  East,  1909; 
Ramsay,  W.  M.,  Religion  of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor,  Hast- 
ings's Diet,  of  Bible,  extra  vol.; 
Kautzsch,  E.,  Religion  of  Israel,  Hastings's  Diet,  of  Bible, 

extra  vol.; 
Marti,  K.,  Religion  des  Alten  Testaments,  1906; 
Rogers,  R.  W.,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  especially 

in  its  Relations  to  Israel,  1908; 
Breasted,  J.  H.,  Development  of  Religion  and  Thought  in 

Ancient  Egypt,  1912; 
Reinach,  S.  (Simmonds  transl.),  Orpheus,  1909; 
Famell,  L.  R.,  Evolution  of  Religion,  1905. 

4.  From  religion  to  science. — In  the  history  of  ancient 
civilization  only  one  nation,  Greece,  developed  by  its  own 
efforts  beyond  the  religious  stage  to  a  stage  of  civilization 
that  may  be  called  scientific.  Other  nations,  and  above  all, 
Persia  and  Israel,  grew  in  religion  decidedly  beyond  the 


FROM  PRIMITIVE  THOUGHT  TO  SCIENCE         55 

primitive  beliefs  and  customs  of  the  prehistoric  peoples 
of  the  Mediterranean  region  and  exerted  powerful  religious 
influences  upon  Mediterranean  civilization;  but  Greece 
alone  exerted  also  a  distinctly  scientific  influence. 

However,  behind  Greek  science  and  of  necessity  behind 
the  first  stages  of  any  indigenous  scientific  evolution, 
stands  religion.  Religion  gives  in  part  the  setting  or  the 
frame  work,  the  general  outlook,  and  the  starting  point  for 
the  more  intellectual  enterprise  of  the  few  leaders  who  dis- 
cover and  seek  to  solve  problems  that  we  may  call  scien- 
tific. Indeed,  the  general  world  hypotheses  to  be  found 
at  the  beginning  of  Greek  scientific  thought  were  partly 
religious  and  prescientific,  and  Greek  scientists  never 
completely  outgrew  these  religious  world  hypotheses.  In 
other  words,  religion  gave  Greece  the  general  bounds 
within  which  her  science  developed  and  from  which  man's 
intellect  failed  to  make  its  escape  until  the  days  of  modern 
science.^ 

5.  The  conflict  of  science  with  religion. — The  process 
of  outgrowing  the  conceptions  and  beliefs  of  an  earlier 
prescientific  era  gives  rise,  as  we  have  seen,  to  a  conflict 
between  the  old  beliefs  and  customs  and  the  new  thought. 
It  does  so  from  two  psychological  causes.  First,  a  conser- 
vatism exists  in  every  individual  adult  and  in  society 
that  makes  the  formation  of  any  new  habit  which  conflicts 
with  strongly  established  habits  or  customs  exceeding 
difficult.  Second,  progress  in  civilization,  and  of  course 
in  science,  is  essentially  the  enterprise  of  the  variable 
gifted  few  and  not  of  the  conservative  mediocre  many. 
Hence  the  theory  and  practice  of  the  few  must  of  necessity 
tend  always  to  be  in  advance  of  the  beliefs  and  customs  of 
the  many. 

No  wonder  then  that  in  both  the  ancient  and  the  modern 

^  These  matters  in  the  history  of  Greek  science  will  be  discussed 
further  in  Chapter  VIII. 


56        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

world  the  prophets  of  science,  as  the  prophets  of  rehgion, 
have  often  been  hailed  as  the  enemies  of  man  and  of  religion 
and  have  accordingly  been  persecuted.  In  the  beginnings 
of  science  especially  the  teacher  of  new  theories  has  seemed 
to  society  to  be  the  blasphemer  of  the  gods,  the  corrupter 
of  the  youth,  and  the  destroyer  of  law  and  custom.  Of 
course  it  depended  upon  the  particular  new  theory  and 
again  upon  the  particular  social  and  religious  environment 
how  severe  the  conflict  became  and  how  long  the  conflict 
lasted.  In  Greece  it  is  remarkable  to  what  a  high  degree 
the  new  theories  were  tolerated.  Still  Greek  science  had 
her  martyrs.  In  the  modern  world  science  and  scientific 
research  have  had  to  struggle  for  the  past  six  centuries  to 
overcome  the  resistance  offered  by  the  conservative  many 
and  unfortunately  this  resistance  has  been  offered  fre- 
quently in  the  name  of  religion.  Almost  every  science, 
geography,  astronomy,  medicine,  geology,  biology,  an- 
thropology, and  the  history  of  religion  have  seemed  at 
first  antirehgious,  heretical  or  blasphemous.  However, 
if  we  remember  the  crude  and  primitive  beliefs  and  cus- 
toms of  medieval  Europe  and  recall  the  tremendous  change 
in  the  thought  of  Europe  brought  about  since  the  year 
fourteen  hundred,  the  rapidity  of  the  change  rather  than 
the  severity  of  the  conflict  will  seem  remarkable.  Indeed, 
that  science  ever  did  arise  anywhere  and  ever  did  win  for 
man  some  freedom  of  thought  was  probably  made  possible 
only  by  the  fact  that  society  was  undergoing  many  other 
changes  at  the  same  time.  That  is,  Greek  science  came 
in  days  when  the  Greek  world  was  progressing  religiously, 
economically,  socially,  and  politically;  and  similarly  mod- 
em science  has  come  amid  the  vast  changes  that  have 
created  modern  Europe. 

Fortunately,  as  a  society  grows  intellectually  and  as 
it  feels  the  benefit  of  increased  knowledge  it  tends  to  be- 
come consciously  or  deliberately  tolerant  toward  scientific 


FROM  PRIMITIVE  THOUGHT  TO  SCIENCE         57 

progress;  not,  however,  that  it  has  ever  become  in  any 
civiUzation,  even  in  our  own,  consistently  and  completely 
tolerant.  Still,  in  Greece,  in  the  Roman  Empire  and  in 
our  own  days  history  bears  witness  to  an  amount  of 
tolerance  on  the  part  of  society  at  large  toward  man's 
intellectual  enterprise  which  is  remarkably  great  com- 
pared with  the  Httle  freedom  possible  when  the  individual 
confronts  the  iron  rigidity  of  custom  in  primitive  and  early 
society.  In  fact,  the  amount  of  tolerance  is  itself  an  index 
of  advance  and  rank  in  the  scale  of  civilization,  and  ac- 
cordingly in  both  the  great  epochs  in  western  civilization, 
the  ancient  and  the  modern,  man  has  won  a  liberty  of 
thought  impossible,  or  if  possible  no  doubt  disastrous,  in 
the  lower  stages  of  civilization. 

For  further  study  read: 

Bury,  J.  B.,  A  History  of  the  Freedom  of  Thought  (Home 
University  Library). 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

White,  A.  D.,  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with 
Theology  in  Christendom. 

6.  The  mutual  influence  of  religion  and  science. — As 

the  conflict  between  science  and  rehgion  has  been  dis- 
cussed and  as  our  chief  concern  will  be  with  the  history  of 
science,  we  may  here  best  consider  their  mutual  influence 
throughout  history.  The  conflict  has  often  been  severe  and 
unworthy,  but  as  the  historian  of  philosophy  looks  back 
upon  the  centuries  passed  he  cannot  fail  to  see  right  on 
both  sides  and  mutual  benefit  from  the  struggle.  Both 
sides  have  proved  themselves  to  represent  permanent  ,> 
interests  of  the  human  race  and  therefore  both  religion  and  '  • 
science  belong  to  the  complete  life  of  man.  As  a  society 
with  purely  scientific  and  no  artistic  interests  would  be 
monstrous  and  as  no  such  society  ever  has  existed  even  if 
it  can  exist;  so  also  a  scientific  but  non-religious  society 


58        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

has  never  really  existed  and  if  it  does  tend  to  develop  it 
soon  reverts  to  type.  Indeed,  the  most  exclusively  in- 
tellectual epochs,  such  as  the  age  of  Pericles  or  the  eight- 
eenth century  in  modern  Europe,  are  hable  to  be  followed 
by  a  period  of  romanticism  and  so  revert  to  the  more 
nearly  complete  Hfe  which  is  both  intellectual  and  emo- 
tional. On  the  one  hand,  this  struggle  between  science  and 
religion  has  forced  science  to  recognize  the  other  funda- 
mental interests  of  mankind  and  to  harmonize  its  interests 
with  them  wherever  they  have  tended  to  be  ignored.  On 
the  other  hand,  religion  has  greatly  profited  by  the  strug- 
gle, for  religion  has  tended  to  be  purified  and  ennobled. 
Religion  as  the  more  popular  and  the  more  ancient  enter- 
prise has  carried  with  it  through  the  ages  an  immense 
amount  of  primitive  belief,  thought  and  custom.  Often  its 
noblest  and  essential  elements  have  been  hidden  under  a 
burden  of  magic,  ritual  and  myth;  and  the  struggle  with 
science  has  helped  the  genuine  religious  insight  of  man  to 
discover  these  noble  and  essential  elements  and  bring  them 
to  the  light  of  day. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  TWO  MAJOR  PERIODS  IN  THE  HISTORY  OP  EUROPEAN 
PHILOSOPHY 

1.  The  three  major  periods  of  history. — The  history 
of  western  civihzation  may  be  divided  into  three  great 
epochs.  These  epochs  are  respectively  the  River  period, 
the  Mediterranean  period  and  the  Atlantic  period.  The 
river  period  includes  the  great  civilizations  along  the  river 
Nile  and  along  the  rivers  emptying  into  the  Persian  gulf, 
the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates.  It  extended  in  time  from  at 
least  four  thousand  years  before  Christ  to  the  days  when 
Greek  thought,  culture  and  military  leadership  dominated 
these  more  ancient  civilizations,  that  is,  to  the  days  of 
Alexander  the  Great  and  his  successors.^  The  Mediter- 
ranean period  includes  the  civilizations  in  the  lands  border- 
ing directly  upon  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  It  extended  in 
time  from  the  ancient  civilizations,  so  recently  revealed 
to  us  by  archeological  research,  in  Mycenae,  Crete  and 
other  places  to  our  modern  days  when  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
has  become  the  chief  carrier  of  the  world's  trade,  that  is, 
from  at  least  the  third  millennium  before  Christ  to  the  end 
of  the  middle  ages  following  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire and  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean  even  to  recent 
centuries.    The  third,  or  Atlantic  epoch  is  the  present  era 

1  That  is  to  say,  the  river  civilization  then  became  absorbed  by  or 
taken  into  the  Mediterranean.  Similarly  with  the  end  of  the  Medi- 
terranean period,  the  Mediterranean  culture  was  absorbed  by  or 
taken  into  the  more  extensive  culture  of  the  modern  or  Atlantic 
world.  In  a  genuine  sense  therefore  Egyptian  civilization  has  never 
ceased,  nor  has  the  Mediterranean. 

59 


60        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

in  which  the  nations  of  modern  western  and  northern 
Europe  and  their  colonies  have  come  into  existence  and 
have  become  the  leaders  in  culture,  wealth  and  military 
power,  and  in  which  the  Atlantic  Ocean  has  become 
little  more  than  an  inland  sea  on  whose  shores  these  na- 
tions are  grouped,  leaving  the  Pacific  the  only  true  ocean. 
That  is,  the  third  epoch  extends  in  time  from  the  inroad 
of  northern  peoples  into  the  Roman  Empire  to  our  own 
days. 

2.  The  first  coming  of  science. — In  what  period  of  his- 
tory did  science  first  appear?  That  is,  where  and  when 
did  a  few  men  deliberately  begin  to  give  up  their  prescien- 
tific  beliefs  and  endeavor  to  explain  some  things  in  ways  we 
call  scientific?  Scholars  agree  that  this  first  took  place 
in  Greece  in  the  sixth  and  the  succeeding  centuries  before 
Christ.  Hence  it  was  in  the  Greek  world,  in  the  days  of 
Greece's  greatest  glory  that  men  began  to  ask  questions 
never  before  asked  and  to  seek  information  which  to  ob- 
tain was  to  revolutionize  man's  thought  and  conduct. 
Then  and  there  science  after  science  began,  for  by  the  end 
of  this  period  we  find  in  existence  astronomy,  meteorology, 
mathematics,  physics,  biology,  medicine,  psychology,  geog- 
raphy, history,  grammar,  logic,  metaphysics,  esthetics, 
ethics,  and  politics. 

Wonderful  as  these  centuries  were,  they  were  not 
miraculous,  as  they  would  seem  to  us  to  be,  if  ignorant  of 
the  environment  of  the  Greek  peoples  and  of  the  civihza- 
tion  of  preceding  centuries,  we  believed  them  to  be  the 
dawn  of  history.  This  they  were  far  from  being ;  for  at  that 
time  one  of  the  three  great  epochs  into  which  the  history 
of  western  civilization  is  divided,  was  drawing  to  its  close 
and  the  second  epoch  was  already  well  advanced.  In  short, 
the  beginning  of  science  had  before  it  as  many  centuries  of 
civilization  as  have  followed  it.  Before  it  were  the  civili- 
zations of  Egypt,  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Asia  Minor,  Phoeni- 


THE  TWO  MAJOR  PERIODS  61 

cia,  and  that  of  early  Greece  itself.  So  to  men  in  the 
sixth  century  B.  C.  the  civiHzed  world  seemed  old,  as  old 
as  it  seems  to  you  and  to  me.  Moreover,  these  civiliza- 
tions were  wonderful;  how  wonderful  is  revealed  to  us  by 
recent  archeological  research.  Perhaps  their  most  remark- 
able aspect  is  that  such  gigantic  buildings  and  public 
works,  such  distant  sea  voyages  and  vast  military  enter- 
prises, such  division  of  labor  and  comphcated,  well  organ- 
ized governments,  such  beautiful  stone  work,  pottery  and 
metal  work,  such  wealth  and  refinement,  were  possible 
before  the  days  of  those  sciences  to  which  our  modern 
civihzation  is  so  deeply  indebted.  For  example,  it  is  all 
but  incredible  that  the  builders  of  the  pyramids  and  the 
vast  temples  of  Egypt  were  quite  ignorant  of  either  math- 
ematical or  physical  science. 

Of  course,  they  must  have  had  a  vast  amount  of  em- 
pirical information,  for  instance,  empirical  geometry  and 
mechanics.  They  could  measure  land,  lay  out  and  propor- 
tion the  angles  of  buildings,  cut  stone  so  it  would  fit,  and 
transport  long  distances  stones  weighing  many  tons.  Such 
information  must  have  been  got  gradually  in  the  course  of 
centuries  by  the  primitive  (or  trial  and  error)  method,  and 
handed  down  from  one  generation  of  craftsmen  and  en- 
gineers to  another.^ 

Let  me  then  repeat,  had  not  remarkable  civilizations 
preceded  the  sixth  century  there  would  have  been  no 
Greek  science;  for  the  scientific  attitude  and  the  scientific 
problem  are  found  not  among  the  grossly  ignorant  but 

^  All  this  suggests  to  what  an  enormous  extent  the  skill  even  of 
our  modem  craftsmen,  engineers,  statesmen,  judges,  merchants, 
bankers,  soldiers,  physicians,  has  been  acquired  by  trial  and  error 
and  by  way  of  tradition,  rather  than  by  science,  even  though  science 
has  made  an  immense  amount  of  our  skill  possible.  In  short,  we  find 
Egypt  wonderful  but  not  inexplicable,  for  we  can  see  going  on  in 
some  places  right  about  us  such  trial  and  error  processes  as  made 
Egypt  possible. 


62        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

only  among  men  rich  in  the  possession  of  empirical  and 
practical  information.  Consider  again  a  few  simple  il- 
lustrations. The  lever  had  to  be  well  known  and  skill- 
fully used  before  men  began  to  investigate  and  explain  it. 
Human  diseases  had  to  be  well  known  in  their  sympto- 
matic or  empirical  aspects  before  it  entered  into  the  mind 
of  man  to  investigate  scientifically  the  causes  of  these 
diseases.  The  heavens  had  to  be  watched  and  studied 
ages  before  any  genuinely  scientific  astronomy  could 
begin.  A  large  amount  of  useful  arithmetic  and  geometry 
had  to  be  known  before  men  could  begin  to  discover  and 
demonstrate  the  highly  general  theorems  of  elementary 
mathematics.  Masterpieces  of  art  and  literature  had  to 
come  into  being  before  a  scientific  interest  in  the  principles 
of  art  and  rhetoric  could  arise.  Language  had  to  be  spoken 
grammatically  long  before  men  ever  raised  the  problems 
we  study  in  our  text-books  on  grammar.  Various  forms 
of  government  with  elaborate  constitutions  and  legal  cus- 
toms had  to  be  in  existence  before  men  began  to  study 
politics  scientifically. 

Much  as  the  Greeks  of  the  sixth  and  the  three  succeed- 
ing centuries  owed  to  their  neighbors  and  to  their  ances- 
tors, they  owed  much  also  to  their  own  environment  and 
especially  to  the  great  changes  in  their  life  and  thought 
wrought  by  the  events  of  the  eighth  and  seventh  centuries. 
These  centuries  were  times  of  great  endeavor.  In  them 
colonies  from  the  older  Greek  cities  were  founded  in  almost 
every  nook  and  corner  of  the  Mediterranean  and  Black 
Seas.  Hence  they  were  times  in  which  a  large  amount 
of  geographical  and  other  information  was  flooding  into 
the  Greek  world;  and  they  were  times  that  to-day  we 
should  call  progressive,  for  colonists  are  pioneers,  and  pio- 
neers are  of  all  men  the  most  venturesome,  venturesome 
in  breaking  away  from  the  traditions  and  customs  of  the 
old  home,  and  venturesome  in  tolerating  new  customs 


THE  TWO  MAJOR  PERIODS  63 

and  beliefs.  In  short,  the  centuries  immediately  preced- 
ing the  birth  of  science  saw  a  great  change  in  Greek  life, 
thought  and  custom,  a  change  comparable  to  the  change 
wrought  in  modern  Europe  by  the  discovery  of  America 
and  of  the  way  to  the  Indies  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 

3.  The  major  periods  in  the  development  of  scientific 
thought. — We  have  mentioned  three  great  periods  in  the 
history  of  civilization  and  we  have  seen  that  the  dawn  of 
science  lies  well  within  the  second  period.  Into  what 
major  periods  can  the  development  of  science  in  turn  be 
divided?^  As  there  have  been  two  great  periods  in  Euro- 
pean history  during  which  science  has  existed,  so  of  neces- 
sity there  have  been  two  great  periods  and  two  only  in 
the  development  of  science.  I  say  "of  necessity"  be- 
cause scientific  development  is  dependent  upon  the  great 
political,  social  and  economic  factors  which  make  up  its 
environment  and  because  science  is  itself,  as  the  product 
of  the  intellectual  Hfe  of  civilized  peoples,  no  more  than  a 
part  of  their  civihzation.  Let  us  call  these  two  major 
periods  of  scientific  development  respectively  the  Greco- 
Roman  (the  Mediterranean)  and  the  modern  (the  At- 
lantic). 

The  remainder  of  this  book  will  be  given  to  the  study  of 
the  philosophical  development  of  Europe  during  these 
two  epochs.  The  first  task  will  be  to  give  some  account 
of  the  primitive  thought  to  which  Greek  scientific  thought 
was  peculiarly  indebted  and  then  to  trace  in  its  four  periods 

1  Here  I  must  call  attention  to  the  impossibility  of  giving  a  definite 
boundary  to  most  historical  periods.  For  example,  when  did  the 
chief  center  of  civilization  shift  from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  north- 
em  nations  of  Europe?  The  transition  was  gradual  and  therefore 
the  end  of  the  Mediterranean  period  and  the  beginning  of  the  Atlantic 
period  are  not  adjacent  points  whose  date  can  be  definitely  fixed. 
Rather  the  two  eras  overlap  for  centuries  and  it  would  be  thoroughly 
arbitrary  and  quite  misleading  to  designate  the  date  of  a  minor  event 
such  as  the  so-called  fall  of  Rome  in  476  as  the  point  of  transition. 


64        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  development  of  Greco-Roman  philosophy.  The  second 
task  will  be  to  give  an  account  of  the  philosophical  de- 
velopment of  modem  Europe.  We  shall  now  turn  to  the 
first  subject,  the  development  of  philosophic  thought  in 
the  Greco-Roman  period. 

For  further  study  read: 

Myres,  J.  L.,  The  Dawn  of  History  (Home  University  Li- 
brary). 


PART  II 

ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   MEDITERRANEAN   PERIOD 

1.  Greek  science  and  philosophy. — Man's  scientific 
enterprise  within  the  Mediterranean,  or  Greco-Roman 
period  begins  in  the  Greek  cities  on  the  western  coast  of 
Asia  Minor  and  in  the  Greek  colonies  in  Sicily  and  south- 
ern Italy.  Later,  that  is,  during  the  fifth  and  fourth  cen- 
turies B.  C,  scientific  thought  and  research  become  cen- 
tered in  Athens.  Finally,  with  the  Alexandrine  empire 
Greek  science  and  culture  are  carried  throughout  the  east- 
ern Mediterranean  region,  and  later  to  Rome  and  through- 
out the  western  Roman  Empire.  Examined  from  our 
modern  point  of  view,  the  Greco-Roman  period  seems  an 
epoch  of  splendid  beginnings  in  science  to  which  mankind 
will  forever  remain  indebted,  but  none  the  less  an  epoch 
in  which  few  sciences  really  got  more  than  started  upon 
what  has  become  their  modern  fine  of  development.  It 
was  an  epoch  in  which  primitive  thought  was  outgrown 
only  in  part  and  permanently  outgrown  only  in  a  few 
places,  an  epoch  marked  by  critical  insight  and  brilHant 
speculation  rather  than  by  verified  hypotheses,  that  is, 
an  age  of  thought  rather  than  an  age  of  experimental 
investigation.  As  an  age  of  thought  its  greatest  scientific 
achievements  were  philosophical,  mathematical  and  as- 
tronomical; whereas  firm  foundations  for  such  sciences 
as  physics,  chemistry,  geology,  anatomy,  physiology, 
psychology,  sociology  and  economics  and  the  scientific 
study  of  the  history  of  life,  of  man  and  of  human  institu- 
tions, were  but  begun.  Compared,  however,  with  the 
thought  of  the  preceding  era  and  with  the  thought  of  sur- 

67 


68        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

rounding  peoples,  the  various  scientific  enterprises  and 
achievements  of  the  Greeks  were  astonishingly  great  and 
numerous;  and  they  seem  even  greater  when  we  recall  that 
the  Greeks  began  the  task  and  showed  the  way,  whereas 
the  moderns  began  by  first  being  instructed  by  the  Greeks. 

Unfortunately  the  golden  age  of  Greek  civilization  was 
a  very  short  period,  lasting  only  a  few  hundred  years 
(pre-emmently  the  sixth,  the  fifth  and  the  fourth  centuries 
B.  C.);  for  Greece  was  fated  to  remain  a  group  of  rival 
states  which  could  not  unite  and  permanently  co-operate. 
It  may  be  idle  to  try  to  guess  what  Greece  might  have 
given  the  world,  could  these  city-states  have  become  a 
federated  republic,  similar  to  modern  Switzerland,  for 
example,  and  could  they  have  given  united  loyalty  to  the 
leadership  of  their  great  men;  but  it  is  not  idle  to  assert 
that  pohtical  and  social  disintegration  shortened  this 
most  wonderful  of  epochs.  That  is  to  say,  Greece  had 
either  to  unite  and  rule  the  world  or  to  be  ruled  by  the 
strong  arm  of  the  foreigner  who  could  rule  the  world.  The 
fates,  or  rather  the  inability  to  solve  her  economic  and 
social  problem,^  made  Greece  incapable  of  choosing  the 
former.  The  political  effect  was  that  the  city-states  of 
Greece  lost  their  independence  and  became,  first,  part  of 
the  Macedonian  empire  and,  later,  part  of  the  Roman. 
The  cultural  effect  was  that  the  learned  Greek  and  his 
pupils  became  the  schoolmasters  of  the  Mediterranean 
world,  and,  as  is  so  often  the  case  with  schoolmasters, 
ceased  to  be  intellectually  progressive.  In  other  words, 
after  the  downfall  of  the  city-states  the  scientific  enter- 
prise commences  to  be  given  up  and  its  place  is  taken  more 
and  more  by  other  interests  and  by  a  mere  endeavor  to 
acquire  what  in  the  meantime  has  become  a  traditional 
wisdom. 

1  Especially  the  struggle  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  strug- 
gle due  to  the  inabiUty  of  the  freeman  to  compete  successfully  with 
slave  labor. 


THE  MEDITERRANEAN  PERIOD  69 

One  other  misfortune  also  checked  the  intellectual  enter- 
prise, a  misfortune  due  likewise  to  political  and  social 
changes.  It  has  been  well  called,  the  (religious)  loss  of 
nerve.  Greece  was  not  destined  to  develop  her  ancient 
folk  rehgions  into  a  highly  ennobling  and  stimulating 
national  religion.  The  religion  of  the  enlightened  and 
scientific  gave  way  more  and  more  to  the  primitive  reli- 
gious tendencies  of  the  folk  and  to  the  inroad  of  many 
oriental  cults  and  tendencies.  The  outcome  was  a  steady 
and  increasing  rehgious  decadence,  ending  in  a  religion 
of  magic,  animism,  and  crude  suggestion. 

For  further  study  read: 

Dickinson,  G.  L.,  The  Greek  View  of  Life; 

Livingstone,  R.  W.,  The  Greek  Genius  and  Its  Meaning 
for  Us,  1912; 

Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  A  Survey  of  Greek  Civilization,  1896; 

Burnet,  J.,  Early  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.,  1908,  1-35; 

Gomperz,  T.,  Greek  Thinkers,  Vol.  I,  3-42; 

Thilly,  F.,  History  of  Philosophy,  1914,  7-14. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  What  Have  the  Greeks  Done  for  Modem 
Civilization?  1910; 

Zunmern,  A.  E.,  The  Greek  Commonwealth,  1911; 

Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization  (Records  of  Civili- 
zation:   Sources  and  Studies),  1915. 
2.  The  periods  of  Greco-Roman  science. — From  the 
foregoing  it  follows   that    there  were  two  chief  epochs 
within  the  Mediterranean  period,  the  golden  age  (6th, 
5th  and  4th  centuries  B.  C.)  and  the  age  of  decline;  but 
each  of  these  epochs  may  be  properly  divided  into  two  sub- 
periods,  giving  us  in  all  four  periods  of  Greco-Roman 
science.    The  golden  age,  before  Athens  becomes  the  most 
promment  city  in  Greece  for  its  culture,  is  usually  called 
the  early  or  -presophistic  period.    It  extends  roughly  from 
600  B.  C.  to  400  B.  C.^    The  second  period  may  be  called 
1  Of  course  such  dates  do  not  apply  to  all  or  to  any  specific  parts 


70         THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 


the  Athenian  period,  not,  mark  well,  because  it  is  exclu- 
sively Athenian  but  because  of  the  prominence  within  it 
of  Athenian  culture  and  influence.  Its  dates  are  470 
B.  C.  to  300  B.  C.  The  age  of  decUne  may  properly  be  di- 
vided into  two  periods,  the  Hellenistic  and  the  Roman, 
if  for  no  other  reason,  at  least  for  the  reason  that  the 
extension  of  Rome's  dominion  to  include  the  eastern  Medi- 
terranean countries  and  neighboring  lands  had  tremendous 
consequences  to  the  entire  civilization  of  these  peoples. 
The  Hellenistic  period  begins  in  the  time  of  Alexander 
and  lasts,  let  us  say,  till  the  age  of  Augustus  Csesar,  that 
is,  from  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  to  the  Christian 
era.  In  it  Greek  culture  is  carried  far  and  wide  through- 
out the  Mediterranean  world;  and  Rome,  the  future  mis- 
tress of  the  world,  becomes  Greek  in  culture.  The  Roman 
period  extends  from  the  first  century  before  Christ  to  the 
days  following  Gregory  the  Great,  till  about  700  A.  D. 
when  the  dechne  of  the  old  culture  in  Italy,  Spain  and 
Gaul  has  nearly  reached  its  lowest  point. 

Let  us  in  the  next  chapter  study  briefly  the  influence 
of  primitive  thought  upon  Greek  science  and  in  the  im- 
mediately following  chapters  the  history  of  Greek  philo- 
sophic thought  after  the  birth  of  science. 


Mediterranean  Period, 
600B.C.— 700A.D. 


Golden  Age, 

600  B.C.— 300  B.C. 


Age  of  Decline, 
350B.C.— 700A.D. 


Early  Period, 
600  B.  C— 400  B.  C. 
Athenian  Period, 
470  B.C.— 300  B.C. 
Hellenistic  Period, 
350B.C.— lA.D. 
Roman  Period, 
lOOB.C— 700A.D. 


of  the  Greek  world.  Science  began  in  some  parts  much  later  than 
in  other  parts  and  schools  of  thought  endured  longer  in  some  parts 
than  they  did  in  others.  Giving  any  period  definite  dates  is,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  a  mere  convention  however  useful  and  helpful 
a  convention. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FEOM   RELIGION   TO   SCIENCE   IN   GREECE  * 

1.  Greek  religion. — Of  all  religious  developments  that 
of  ancient  Greece,  the  mother  of  science,  is  of  greatest 
importance  to  us  in  beginning  the  study  of  the  history  of 
philosophy.  Unfortunately  here,  as  in  the  case  of  other 
ancient  religions,  the  historian  has  to  work  backward  from 
the  historically  known  to  a  period  which  has  left  us  little  t 
if  any  written  evidence.  In  the  golden  age  of  Greek  his-  ^i^ 
tory  we  have  evidence  of  two  distinct  religious  movements 
of  different  prehistoric  origin.  On  the  one  hand,  are  to 
be  found  the  beliefs  and  customs  of  the  earlier  conquer- 
ing invaders  of  Greece  from  the  north  who  gave  Greece 
what  is  called  the  Olympic  religion,  familiar  to  e very- 
reader  of  Homer  and  of  the  great  Greek  dramatists.  On 
the  other  hand,  are  to  be  found  the  old  local  cults  and 
customs  indigenous  to  Greek  lands  for  ages  preceding. 

At  one  time,  the  Olympic  religion  tended  to  become  a 
national  monotheistic  and  ethical  religion;  but  this  ten- 
dency was  never  sufficiently  strong  to  accomplish  such  a 
result  except  in  the  thought  and  writings  of  a  few  great 
religious  teachers,  for  the  Olympic  religion  so  full  of  prom- 

1  In  this  chapter  I  follow  in  part  Comford's  book  "From  Religion 
to  Philosophy."  His  views  are  questioned  by  high  authority;  but 
speculative  and  even  doubtful  as  they  may  be,  they  are  certainly 
most  suggestive  and  point  out  a  Hne  of  study  that  should  be  followed. 
Greek  philosophy  in  its  beginnings  is  an  anthropological  and  so- 
ciological as  well  as  a  philosophical  problem;  and  therefore  the  an- 
thropological and  sociological  point  of  view  from  which  to  inspect 
its  beginnings  is  unquestionably  the  correct  one. 

71 


72        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ise  never  became  completely  the  religion  of  the  folk.  Nev- 
ertheless its  influence  was  felt,  for  it  left  a  permanent  im- 
pression upon  the  thought  of  Greece.  The  chief  moral 
ideal  of  this  religion  was  justice  ancjself-restiaint ^nd  its 
chief  intellecti^^L  jfifluence  was  restraint  of  superstition 
and  encouragem£Jni,of  a  fearless  scientific  as  opposed  to 
a  mystical  and  superstitious  conception  of  nature. 

Such,  however,  was  not  the  tendency  of  the  folk  religion, 
the  religion  of  the  ancient  local  cults.  And  such  was  not 
the  tendency  of  the  cult  of  Dionysus  and  of^  Orpheus, 
which  became  a  powerful  intellectual  as  well  as  religious 
influence  in  Greece  during  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries 
before  Christ.  The  Orphic  religion  is  essentially  other- 
worldly. It  centers  mari''s  iut^est  upon  the  fate  of  his  soul 
in  a  future  life  rather  than  upon  his  sociarand  phvsical 
l;).^tt^rqi^nt  in  this  world.  In  its  extreme  and  highly 
developed  form  it  is  the  religion  of  the  ascetic  and  the 
mystic.  In  its  cruder  form  it  is  the  rehgion  of  dependence 
upon  magical  rites  and  initiations  to  control  the  destiny 
of  man's  soul,  believed  to  be  of  heavenly  origin,  to  have 
fallen  and  to  be  now  making  the  round  of  the  wheel  of 
fortune.  The  soul  has  come  from  heaven  to  earth.  After 
death  it  may  be  incarnated  in  lower  animals,  it  may  go  to 
hades  and  finally  it  may  find  its  way  back  to  heaven. 
That  is  to  say,  the  soul's  true  home  is  not  on  earth  but  in 
heaven.  Therefore,  the  soul  has  fallen  and  has  a  fallen 
or  corrupt  nature.  It  has  become  defiled  with  the  flesh 
and  the  business  of  religion  is  to  purify,  to  redeem  and  to 
rescue  the  soul.  In  the  long  run  the  influence  of  this  re- 
ligion became  fatal  to  science  and  to  human  enhghten- 
ment,  for  under  its  influence  the  direction  of  least  resistance 
was  toward  complete  reliance  upon  magic  and  ritual  or 
upon  hypnotism  and  asceticism,  rather  than  upon  the  in- 
tellectual and  social  control  by  man  of  his  own  destiny. 
Such  a  religion  does  lead  to  a  certain  gentleness,  humility 


FROM  RELIGION  TO  SCIENCE  IN  GREECE         73 

and  brotherly  love;  but  it  discourages  the  great  enter- 
prises of  civilization.  It  reconciles  man  to  the  decadence 
of  civilization  instead  of  filling  him  with  the  enthusiasm 
and  energy  requisite  for  social  and  economic  progress  and 
for  political  co-operation  and  self-government. 

2.  Greek  theology. — In  the  highly  civilized  and  en- 
lightened communities^  the  beliefs  and  customs  of  more 
primitive  days  tended  to  suggest  explicit  problems  and 
theories  regarding  the  world  and  human  life.  Thus  arose 
explicit  bodies  of  doctrine  that  may  be  called  theologies. 
These  theologies  developed  from  the  primitive  customs 
and  beliefs  but  they  never  outgrew,  even  in  the  minds  of 
the  greatest  Greek  thinkers,  the  typical  forms  foreordained 
by  their  lowly  parentage.  And  of  course  the  two  great 
religious  tendencies  originated  and  controlled  two  dis- 
tinct lines  of  thought. 

The  Olympic  tendency  can  be  best  exemplified  for  us  in 
the  cosmogony  of  Hesiod.  Behind  and  supreme  above 
the  gods  is  j^ate  (Moira)  which  divides  the  world  into 
fixed  provinces,  (a)  the  fiery  heaven,  the  sky,  (b)  the  earth, 

(c)  the  air,  usually  called  night  and  regarded  as  dark  and 

(d)  the  sea  (water).  Here  two  points  should  be  noted. 
First,  these  four  provinces  are  evidently  the  visible  uni- 
verse in  its  four  observable  strata,  the  bright  heaven  of  the 
sun  and  stars  above,  immediately  below  it  the  region  of 
air  and  night's  darkness,  then  the  water  of  stream,  river 
and  ocean  and  beneath  all  the  earth.  That  is,  we  have 
here  the  most  noticeable  features  of  the  world,  the  per- 
ceivable features.  Second,  this  division  of  the  world  into 
four  observable  strata  remains  throughout  Greek  thought 
the  chief  feature  of  the  universe.  It  forms  one  source  of 
the  typical  Greek  theories  of  the  world  and  it  may  be  the 

*  Such  as  the  more  prosperous  and  progressive  city-states  of  Ionia; 
and  Magna  Grsecia  from  the  eighth  century  on  and  those  of  conti- 
nental Greece  from  the  fifth  century  on. 


74        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

source  of  the  four  elements,  earth,  air,  fire  and  water,  which 
remain  the  elemental  substances  for  later  times  even  to 
the  days  of  modern  Europe. 

The  other,  or  mystic  religious  tendency  also  had  its 
theory  of  the  world.  Here  the  thought  was  not  the  divi- 
sion of  the  universe  sj^atiaUy  into  compartments  or  prov- 
inces but  temporally  into  a  succession  of  stages.  The  soul 
makes  its  rouhd'trom  the  dead  to  the  living  and  back 
again  to  the  dead.  There  is  the  seasonal  round  from 
summer  to  winter  and  from  winter  to  summer.  There 
is  the  round  of  the  heavenly  bodies  and  especially  of 
the  moon  with  its  waxing  and  waning.  In  such  a  reli- 
gion the  important  objects  of  attention  are  the  fate 
of  the  soul,  the  round  of  the  seasons,  and  the  revolution 
of  the  heavenly  bodies,  "pme  is  the  father  of  all  things. 
"God,  as  the  ancient  doctrine  also  has  it,  containing  the 
beginning,  the  end  and  middle  of  all  things  that  are, 
moves  straight  upon  his  revolving  journey  in  the  course 
of  Nature.  And  always  attendant  upon  him  is  Dike,  the 
avenger  of  all  negligence  of  the  divine  law,  after  whom 
follows  closely,  in  orderly  and  humble  fashion,  whosoever 
desires  that  it  shall  be  well  with  him."  ^  Here  we  have  the 
central  thought  of  the  Orphic  religion.  Besides  this,  two 
subordinate  Orphic  beliefs  were  of  great  philosophical 
importance,  first,  the  heavenly  origin,  the  fall  and  the  re- 
demption of  the  smil,  and,  second,  the  ^inejsircle  of  all 
existence,  the  course  from  world  origm  to  world  destruc- 
tion and  round  again  to  a  new  world  origin. 

3.  The  influence  of  Greek  theology  upon  Greek 
science. — Venturesome  it  is,  with  the  small  amount  of  evi- 
dence at  our  command,  to  emphasize  and  to  describe  the 
influence  of  Greek  theology  upon  Greek  science;  but  it  is 
more  venturesome  to  think  of  the  first  scientists  as  scientists 
in  the  modern  sense.  It  would  have  been  a  psychological 
1  Quoted  by  Cornford  from  Plato's  Laws. 


FROM  RELIGION  TO  SCIENCE  IN  GREECE        75 

miracle  had  the  Greek  thinkers  approached  their  problems 
with  minds  universally  open  or  open  to  more  than  a  few 
of  the  matters  heretofore  unobserved  or  if  observed,  al- 
ready interpreted  by  custom  and  religion.  Indeed  what 
littlejve  know  of  their  doctrines  proves  that  their  openness 
9^  HV\^  Wff^  flti  ^^^^'  narrow^'  limited.  Moreover,  one  of 
the  most  important  aspects  of  Greek  philosophy  is  that  it 
began  and  remained  to  the  end  a  religious  philosoj)hy.  It 
was  always  a  theory  or  way  of  life,  as  well  as  a  theory  of 
nature  and  of  man;  and  it  endeavored  to  do  for  the  cul- 
tured man  in  a  nobler  way  what  religion  was  doing  in  a 
less  noble  way  for  the  people. 

One  hypothesis  points  out  two  distinct  currents  running 
through  the  entire  development  of  Greek  philosophy  and 
explains  this  as  due  to  the  influence  of  the  Olympic  and 
Orphic  religions.  In  the  first  century  of  science,  in  the 
Igast  and  especially  in_k)nia,  we  find  the  influence  of  the 
Olympic  religion_steonger;  whereas  the  Orphic  religion  is 
found"  to  be  the  stronger  in  the  West,  that  is^  in  Magna 
Graecia.  And  Greek  philosophy  never  completely  breaks 
away  from  this  early  religious  influence,  but  remains  to  the 
end  two  philosophies. 

4.  The  two  currents  in  Greek  philosophy. — As  both 
philosophies  become  more  scientific  they  become  atomic 
theories  of  the  universe.  The  Ionic,  or  eastern  philosophy 
in  so  doing  consistently  carries  its  atomism  over  to  the 
theory  of  the  soul  and  ends  a  consistent  atomistic  and 
mechanistic  materiahsm.  That  is  to  say,  everything 
whatsoever  is  a  complex  of  atoms  moving  in  empty  space; 
the  animism  of  old  is  virtually  discarded  and  all  the  proc- 
esses of  nature  and  of  mind  are  reduced  to  the  motion  of 
atoms;  at  death  the  soul  disintegrates,  and  its  atoms  are 
scattered;  there  is  no  God,  or  providence,  but  everything 
happens  from  world  creation  to  world  destruction  by  me- 
chanical necessity.    As  a  theory  of  life  it  bids  man  to  center 


76        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

his  interests  entirely  on  this  world  and  his  earthly  welfare 
and  to  discard  as  superstition  the  religion  of  the  folk  and  of 
antiquity.  Its  logical  goal  is  thus  the  philosophy  we  have 
already  called  naturalism,  the  philosophy  of  the  hard- 
headed  non-religious  scientist,  the  philosophy  according 
to  which  man's  soul  is  to  be  purified  by  being  freed  from 
superstition. 

The  Pythagorean,  or  western  philosophy  in  becoming 
scientific  remains  largely  religious.  In  its  golden  age, 
however,  it  makes  greater  contributions  to  scientific  knowl- 
edge than  does  the  eastern  philosophy,  especially  to  math- 
ematics and  astronomy  and  to  biology.  It  retains  through- 
out its  interest  in  man's  soul  and  his  immortal  destiny. 
Philosophy  is  also  its  means  of  soul  purification,  but  this 
is  done  by  freeing  the  mind  of  mundane  interests  and  pas- 
sions and  by  teaching  the  mind  to  contemplate  the  eternal 
and  divine  laws  ruling,  unseen  by  the  ignorant,  behind  the 
world  of  sense.  Its  logical  goal  is  thus  a  mystical  philo- 
sophical contemplation  of  and  preparation  for  another 
world,  the  soul's  true  home,  and  the  mystic  contemplation 
of  the  divine  reason,  or  God  in  and  behind  all  things.  This 
western  philosophy  also  in  its  best  days  tends  to  free  man 
from  his  gross  superstitions  though  in  so  doing  it  holds 
fast  to  some  of  man's  oldest  beliefs.  Thus  the  two  tsMIqso- 
'^hies  stand  o'p'posed,  the  eastern,  hard-headed,  and  naturalis- 
tiCf  tfw  western,  mystic,  tender-minded  and  romantic. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Comford,  F.  M.,  From  Religion  to  Philosophy,  1912. 
Eisler,  R.,  Weltenmantel  und  Himmelszelt,  1910. 

5.  Intellectualistic  naturalism  and  romanticism  have 

remained   rivals  throughout  the  history  of  European 

philosophy. — That  these  two  tendencies,  the  scientific 

^  T        and  the  mystic,  the  intellectual  and  the  emotional,  the 

>r'/      naturahstic  and  the  romantic,  were  present  even  in  the 


Cf 


FROM  RELIGION  TO  SCIENCE  IN  GREECE         77 

earliest  days  of  European  science  is  a  matter  of  great 
interest;  for  these  two  tendencies  have  remained  rivals 
throughout  the  development  of  European  philosophy. 
During  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  before  Christ  the 
scientific  and  naturalistic  philosophy  of  Ionia  hold  the 
leadership;  but  from  the  fifth  century  on  through  the 
Hellenistic  and  Roman  periods  and  on  through  the  middle 
ages  mysticism  and  romanticism  form  the  dominant 
European  philosophy.  With  the  sixteenth  century  natu- 
ralism and  intellectualism  once  again  control  the  mind  of 
man  philosophically;  and  finally  in  the  nineteenth  century 
romanticism  again  appears  as  their  rival.  Thus  from  the 
days  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ  to  our  own  the 
two  philosophies  have  contended.  In  the  great  ej;as  of 
progress,  the  golden  ages,  intellectualism  has  been  the 
leader;  but  m  the  ages  of  decadence  and  transition  ro- 
manticism  and  mysticism  have  been  dominant. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   EARLY   PERIOD 

1.  Introductory. — To  understand  the  scientific  tend- 
encies of  any  age  we  must  be  informed  regarding  two 
matters:  first,  the  doctrines  and  interests,  or  intellectual 
habits  socially  inherited  from  the  preceding  generation; 
and  second,  the  facts  or  problems  unnoticed  by  the  pre- 
ceding generation  to  which  the  new  age  attends  and  by  so 
doing  outgrows  in  part  inherited  beliefs  or  interests. 

Let  us  examine  first  the  intellectual  habits  which  the 
early  Greek  thinkers  socially  inherited.  In  general,  the 
Greek  scientists  of  the  sixth  and  following  centuries 
inherited  a  goodly  amount  of  primitive  beliefs  and  customs, 
magic,  animism  and  myth.  In  particular,  they  inherited, 
as  we  have  seen  according  to  one  hypothesis,  two  different 
religious  traditions  regarding  man's  life  and  the  world 
which  forms  his  environment;  first,  the  Olympic  religion 
favoring,  as  history  later  proved,  a  more  rigorously  scien- 
tific development;  and  second,  the  mystic  rehgion  of  Di- 
onysus and  Orpheus  favoring  a  more  religious  and  less 
scientific  trend. 

Whether  this  particular  hypothesis  be  true  or  not, 
Greek  philosophy  certainly  grew  out  of  the  older  religion. 
Indeed  the  major  problem  of  Greek  philosopHic  thougKl 
throughout  all  periods  was  both  cpsmological  and  reli- 
mous;  that  is  to  say,  it  w§,s  a  religious  as  well  asH  scientific 
theory  of  the  world.  "To  anyone  who  has  tried  to  live 
in  sympathy  with  the  Greek  philosophers,  the  suggestion 
that  they  were  '  intellectualists '  must  seem  ludicrous. 

78 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  79 

On  the  contrary,  Greek  philosophy  is  based  on  the  faith 
that  reahty  is  divine,  and  that  the  one  thing  needful  is 
for  the  soul  which  is  akin  to  the  divine,  to  enter  into  com- 
munion with  it.  It  was  in  truth  an  effort  to  satisfy  what 
we  call  the  religious  instinct.  Ancient  religion  was  a  some- 
what external  thing,  and  made  little  appeal  to  this  except 
in  the  'mysteries,'  and  even  the  mysteries  were  apt  to 
become  external,  and  were  peculiarly  liable  to  corruption. 
We  shall  see  again  and  again  that  philosophy  sought  to  do 
for  men  what  the  mysteries  could  only  do  in  part,  and  that 
it  therefore  includes  most  of  what  we  should  now  caM 
religion. 

"Nor  was  this  religion  a  quietist  or  purely  contempla- 
tive one,  at  least  in  its  best  days.  The  mysteries  had  un- 
dertaken t^  regulate  men's  lives,  and  philosophy  had  to, 
do  the  same.  Almost  from  the  beginning  it  was  regarded 
as  a  life.  It  was  no  self-centered  pursuit  of  personal 
holiness  either.  The  man  who  believed  he  had  seen  the 
vision  of  reality  felt  bound  to  communicate  it,  sometimes 
to  a  circle  of  disciples,  sometimes  to  the  whole  human 
race.  Tjie  missionary  spirit  was  stron^^  from  the  first. 
The  philosopher  believed  that  it  was  only  through^e 
knowledge  of  reality  that  men  could  learn  their  own  place 
in  the  world,  and  so  fit  themselves  to  be  fellow-workers 
with  God,  and  beheving  this  he  could  not  rest  till  he  had 
spread  the  knowledge  of  it  to  others.  The  death  of  Soc- 
rates_was  that  of  a  martyr,  and  'intellectuafism,'  ifj;lier.e 
is. such  a  thing,  can  have  no  martyrs."  ^ 

Besides  being  religious  by  virtue  of  social  inheritance, 
the  major  problem  of  Greek  philosophy  was  also  cosmolog- 
ical;  for  Greek  philosophy  began  and  remained  a  theory 
of  the  universe.  To  us  moderns  '*  q^. theory  of  the  universe  " 
sounds  extremely  ambitious ;  and  that  it  does  to  us  and  did 
not  to  the  Greeks  is  important,  and  is  to  be  explained  by 
^  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.,  Part  I,  p.  12. 


80        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  fact  that  what  the  Greeks  meant  by  the  universe  and 
what  the  modern  means,  are  two  quite  different  systems. 
We  mean  the  vast  systems  of  suns  and  their  planets 
throughout  infinite  space,  a  world  with  no  center,  no 
absolute  up  or  down,  a  world  in  which  the  earth  is  a  mere 
infinitesimal  particle,  in  short,  the  world  of  modern  as- 
tronomy. They  meant  the  visible  universe  of  the  naive 
man  or  of  the  child,  the  world  whose  top  is  the  blue  sky  and 
whose  bottom  is  the  earth,  the  world  that  you  and  I  live 
in  most  of  the  time  when  we  are  not  astronomically 
reflective.  Let  us  call  it  the  universe  of  ordinary  percep- 
tion. The  Greeks  at  first  knew  of  no  other  universe,  for 
they  first  of  all  men  outgrew  this  universe  themselves  and 
later  taught  other  men  to  outgrow  it.  Thus  we  should 
not  be  astonished  that  long  before  science  began,  men  had 
explained  this  universe  of  sense  perception  in  their  myths ; 
that  the  Greek  scientists  had  to  start  with  these  myths 
before  they  could  outgrow  them;  and  that  in  outgrowing 
them  they  still  kept  to  the  problem:  What  is  the  world 
that  we  perceive  about  us  and  how  came  it  to  be? 

I  have  just  said,  the  Greeks  outgrew  this  universe  of 
sense  perception,  but  in  truth  they  never  outgrew-it  com- 
pletely;  for  to  the  end  of  the  Greco-Roman  period  and 
even  till  modern  times  this  universe  remained  essentially 
not  only  the  world  of  the  child  but  also  the  world  of  the 
sage.  In  fact,  not  until  the  seventeenth  century  did  Euro- 
pean science  completely  outgrow  this  world  of  man's 
childhood.  Now  the  fact  that  the  earliest  Greek  scientists 
Hved  and  thought  within  this  comfortably  small  world  of 
primitive  thought  has  interesting  consequences ;  for  it  im- 
plies the  complete  absence  of  a  vast  amount  of  informa- 
tion which  we  have  since  acquired  and  which  we  now, 
because  of  social  inheritance,  take  as  a  matter  of  course. 
We  moderns  who  are  so  thoroughly  habituated  to  the 
world  of  modern  astronomy  can  only  with  difficulty  pic- 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  81 

ture  and  appreciate  the  necessary  blindness  of  those  who 
did  not  inherit  what  to  us  is  thoroughly  commonplace. 
However,  if  we  are  to  understand  this  bhndness  we  must 
try  to  imagine  how  the  world  would  appear  to  us  were  we 
quite  ignorant  of  what  astronomy  and  physical  science 
teach  and  were  we  dependent  solely  upon  sense  perception  ^ 
for  our  information, 

(a)  The  sky  would  seem  to  be  a  blue  material  something 
not  very  far  distant.  Or  the  sky  and  earth  would  seem  to 
be  respectively  the  hd  and  bottom  of  a  sort  of  box. 

(6)  This  fact  would  make  us  associate  stars,  sun,  moon, 
lightning,  sky,  clouds,  and  rain;  for  they  all  would  seem 
to  us  to  belong  to  the  same  realm,  to  be  neighbors.  That 
is,  meteorology  and  astronomy  would  form  for  us  one 
science. 

(c)  Night  and  darkness  would  not  seem  to  be  merely  the 
absence  of  light  and  in  particular  of  sunlight  but  to  be  a 
cloudlike  or  foglike  material  entity. 

(d)  It  would  not  be  evident  that  daylight  comes  entirely 
from  the  sun.  Rather  it  would  seem  to  come  largely  from 
the  bright  luminous  sky. 

(e)  The  heavenly  bodies  would  certainly  not  seem  to  us 
what  they  now  do  as  a  result  of  our  schooling.  They 
would  seem  rather  to  be  small,  and  not  extremely  distant, 
fire  or  fiery  objects.  And  of  course  they  would  seem  to 
move  from  east  to  west,  and  the  earth  would  seem  to  be 
at  rest.  Lightning  too  would  seem  to  be  fire  and  to  be 
closely  related  to  the  other  heavenly  fires,  the  sun  and 
stars. 

(/)  Further,  it  would  not  be  evident  what  became  of  the 
sun  at  night  or  what  became  of  the  stars  by  day;  or  what 

'  Not  that  the  Greeks  or  any  other  men  have  ever  been  dependent 
solely  upon  mere  sense  perception,  for  this,  we  have  seen,  no  one  can 
be;  but  that  mere  sense  perception  is  the  chief  source  of  information 
if  we  leave  out  of  account /or  the  moment  the  socially  inherited  behefs. 


82        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

became  of  the  sun  or  moon  in  an  eclipse  or  during  cloudy 
weather. 

(g)  Indeed,  the  heavens  of  the  day  and  the  heavens  of 
the  night  might  seem  two  radically  different  entities. 

(h)  Comets  and  volcanoes  would  of  course  be  quite  mis- 
understood by  us. 

(i)  What  we  know  as  air  would  not  be  known  to  exist. 
Wind  and  breath  of  course  would  be  observed.  However, 
they  would  not  seem  to  be  currents  of  air  but  each  a  dis- 
tinct, though  nearly  intangible,  entity  as  is  a  vapor  or  a 
flame.  Fire  or  flame  would  seem  to  us  to  be  a  material 
entity,  a  thing  in  the  sense  that  a  cloud  is.  As  we  watched 
a  bonfire,  the  fire  would  often  seem  to  us  to  pass  directly 
into  smoke,  and  as  we  watched  the  burning  sticks  it  would 
often  seem  as  though  they  "melted"  into  fire.  That  is, 
wood  seems  to  become  fire,  and  fire  smoke,  precisely  as  ice 
seems  to  become  water  and  water  seems  to  become  vapor, 

{j)  It  would  not  be  evident  to  us  whence  is  formed  the 
rain,  whence  comes  the  water  in  springs,  whence  arises 
the  silt  and  sands  deposited  at  a  river's  mouth  or  along  its 
course,  or  what  becomes  of  the  rain  water  as  it  disappears 
from  the  ground's  surface. 

(k)  The  true  size  and  shape  of  the  earth  would  not  be 
apparent.  Rather  the  earth  would  seem  flat  and  we  should 
be  in  doubt  about  its  extent.  Moreover,  the  earth  would 
seem  the  very  bottom  of  the  universe. 

(l)  The  origin  of  many  plants  and  animals  would  not  be 
known  to  us.  Some  would  seem  to  spring  directly  from 
the  mud  or  from  the  water  of  the  sea.  Their  decay  would 
seem  literally  a  return  to  the  earth  or  to  the  water  whence 
they  sprang. 

(m)  Many  things,  such  as  vapor,  fire,  cloud,  smoke,  and 
even  lower  forms  of  life,  would  seem  to  come  out  of  noth- 
ing and  to  pass  away  into  nothing,  as  to  the  ignorant  odors 
and  sounds  seem  to  do. 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  83 

This  list  by  no  means  exhausts  the  differences  between 
the  world  as  we  picture  it  and  the  world  as  it  might  be 
pictured  by  us  if  our  information  were  limited  to  what  is 
revealed  directly  through  sense  perception ;  but  it  does  at 
least  suggest  the  magnitude  of  the  difference.  These 
particular  naive  and  primitive  beUefs  have  been  chosen 
because  there  is  evidence  that  the  Greek  scientists  inherited 
them  and  had  to  outgrow  them. 

Besides  knowing  what  habits  of  thought  the  Greek 
scientist  inherited  and  besides  noticing  his  lack  of  many  of 
our  socially  inherited  habits  of  thought,  we  must  enquire 
also,  if  we  would  understand  early  Greek  science,  what 
were  the  new  factors  which  led  the  intellectual  leaders  of 
that  time  to  advance  beyond  the  naive  and  primitive  be- 
liefs of  their  fathers.  The  general  factors  in  this  great 
intellectual  awakening  have  been  mentioned  already. 
These  factors  were :  the  establishment  of  Greejk  colonies 
throughout  the  Mediterranean  world  with  their  influence 
upon  thought  and  custom,  and  in  particular  upon  geo- 
graphical knowledge;  tjiejiici^aaejn  wealth,  leisure  and 
refinement  in  parts  of  the  Greek  world;  the^loser  contact 
througKTracTe,  tFavel,  commercial  rivalry  and  geograpSil^l 
juxtaposition  with  the  civiHzations  and  with  the  peoples 
of  Egypt,  of  Phoenicia  and  of  Persia;  and  finally  th^chang- 
ing  political  and  social  conditions  and  the  increase  of  in- 
Iividu,al  freedom  and  initintivp!  within  the  Qreek^  world 
itself  as  the  wealth  and  the  population  grew.  These  sev- 
eral factors  are  especially  prominent  in  Ionia  and  in  the 
Greek  colonies  of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily,  where  science 
had  its  beginning. 

The  special  factors  we  have  yet  to  mention,  but  unfor- 
tunately regarding  most  of  these  we  are  ignorant.  How- 
ever, we  do  know  that  in  these  days  some  Greeks  began  to 
wonder  about  the  motion  of  the  sun,  moon  and  stars,  the 
phases  of  the  moon  and  the  eclipses,  about  the  changes  of 


84        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

season,  weather  and  climate,  about  the  cause  of  day  and 
night,  about  the  shape  and  location  of  island,  continent 
and  sea,  about  sickness  and  death,  and  about  certain 
simple  arithmetical  and  geometrical  truths.  Moreover,  we 
know  that  the  Egyptians,  the  Persians  and  the  other  near 
neighbors  of  the  Greeks  could  arouse  among  the  Greeks 
interest  in  some  of  these  matters ;  for  they  had  much  sim- 
ple empirical  information  regarding  the.  heavenly  bodies, 
their  motions  and  periods  and  regarding  elementary 
mathematical  relations.  Finally,  we  may  infer  that  the 
many  and  distant  voyages  of  Greek  sailors  often  aroused 
an  interest  in  geography,  climate  and  the  phenomena  of 
the  heavens.  But  whatever  the  special  stimuli  may  have 
been,  when  the  Greeks  once  commenced  to  enquire  into 
these  few  subjects,  they  were  led  on  rapidly  to  interest 
themselves  in  others,  and  within  two  centuries  the  field  of 
their  enquiry  had  become  widely  extended.  In  breadth  of 
interest  and  study  the  only  epoch  in  all  of  human  history 
comparable  to  this  of  the  Greeks  is  that  composed  of  the 
past  five  centuries  in  western  Europe. 

2.  The  important  discoveries  known  to  have  been 
made  in  the  early  period  of  Greek  science.^ — Of  the  be- 

^  The  most  prominent  thinkers  in  the  early  period  of  Greek  philos- 
ophy are  the  following.  The  eastern  tradition:  Thales  of  Miletus 
(floruit  circa  585  B.  C);  Anaximander  of  Miletus  (fl.  c.  570  B.  C); 
Anaximenes  of  Miletus  (fl.  c.  540  B.  C);  Heracleitus  of  Ephesus 
(influenced  also  by  western  thought)  (fl.  c.  495  B.  C.)-  The  western 
tradition:  Pythagoras  of  Samos,  later  of  Southern  Italy  (fl.  c.  525 
B.  C.)  and  his  followers.  The  latter  divided  into  two  schools,  the 
Pythagoreans  and  the  Eleatics.  Of  the  Pythagoreans  (of  whom 
few  names  have  come  down  to  us)  should  be  mentioned  Philolaus  of 
Tarentum  or  Crotona  (fl.  c.  440  B.  C.)  and  Archytas  of  Tarentum  (fl. 
c.  430  B.  C).  Of  the  Eleatics  the  most  noted  names  are:  Parmenides 
of  Elea  (fl.  c.  475  B.  C);  Zeno  of  Elea  (fl.  c.  450);  and  Mehssus  of 
Samos  (fl.  c.  440).  Related  to  both  eastern  and  western  traditions 
and  especially  to  Eleatic  thought  were:  Xenophanes  of  Colophon, 
later  of  southern  Italy  (fl.  c.  530  B.  C);  Empedocles  of  Sicily  (fl.  c. 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  85 

ginning  of  the  modern,  or  Atlantic  period  we  have  ample 
records  from  which  we  know  it  to  have  been  a  period  of 
great  and  numerous  discoveries,  a  period  that  was  adven- 
turous and  experimental  in  its  thought  and  research  and 
in  its  many  other  enterprises.  Now  little  as  we  know  of 
the  details  of  the  first  century  of  Greek  science,  we  have 
enough  evidence  to  infer  that  it  was  a  similar  period,  that 
it  also' was  an  age  of  discovery.  In  short,  like  the  begmning 
of  the  modern  period  this  century  also  was  a  period  of  geo- 
graphical, astronomical,  mathematical,  physical,  and  phys- 
iological discovery. 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  great  advance  in  geo- 
graphical knowledge  brought  about  by  the  spread  of 
Greek  colonies  and  commerce.  In  general,  geographical 
science  began  m  this  period.  In  particular,  we  hear  of  the 
(iehberate  attempt  to  ascertain  latitudes  ^  and  for  the 
first  time  in  history  to  construct  maps  ^  and  to  write  books 
that  can  be  called  geographical.  Of  course,  compared  with 
our  modern  geographical  information,  the  information 
of  these  Greek  thmkers  remamed  meagre  and  much  that 
they  believed  was  erroneous.  But  here  as  elsewhere  their 
great  achievement  was  that  they  made  a  beginning. 

In  astronomy  too  the  first  genuinely  scientific  beginnings 
belong  to  this  period.  Instead  of  the  primitive  behefs  men 
were  for  the  first  time  entertaining  such  thoughts  as  these: 
that  the  earth  is  not  an  absolute  bottom  to  the  world  but 
rests  suspended  in  space,^  supported  possibly  by  water  or 
by  the  air;  that  the  earth  moves;  and  even  that  the  earth 
swings  free  in  space  and  is  of  spherical  shape.  They  dis- 
455  B.  C);  Anaxagoras  of  Asia  Minor  and  later  of  Athens  {fl.  c.  460 
B.  C);  and  finally  the  atomist,  Leucippus  of  Abdera  {fl.  c.  460  B.  C). 

1  By  an  instrument  called  the  gnomon  which  the  Greeks  seem  to 
have  imported  from  Asia. 

2  Anaximander  and  (possibly)  Hecateus  of  Miletus  {fl.  c.  495). 

3  Which  makes  it  possible  for  the  sun  to  go  beneath  it  at  night 
from  west  back  to  east. 


86        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

covered  that  the  moon  shines  by  reflected  Hght  and  that 
it  is  spherical.  They  discovered  the  true  causes  of  lunar 
and  solar  eclipses.  They  entertained  the  thought  that  the 
heavenly  luminaries  are  bodies  and  that  they  are  immensely 
bigger  than  they  appear.  Finally,  some  thinkers  became 
convinced  that  the  earth  itself  is  one  of  the  planets  and 
that  it  moves  in  an  orbit  about  a  central  fire.^  In  the  realm 
of  physics  they  discovered  that  the  space  immediately 
about  us  is  not  mere  emptiness  but  is  filled  with  air  and 
that  darkness  is  an  absence  of  light  rather  than  a  positive 
thing. 

Notice  in  these  few  illustrations  two  important  stages 
of  philosophical  growth.  First,  many  _ancient  and  tena- 
cious  beliefs  and  crude  superstitions  were__expliatly  con- 
fradictecf.  ^iSecond,  mteliecXual  leaders  were,  tMnking 
tlieir  way  be^mS  wViat  is^R^t^TnTly*pprcmved  l?Y_sepse_^ 
entertaming  even  theories  that  must  have  seemed  to  their 
fellow  citizens  to  defy  not  only  all  tradition  but  man's  very 
eyesight. 

The  progress  of  this  period  was  great  also  in  the  field 
of  pure  thought,  especially  in  logic  and  in  mathematics. 
For  the  first  time  known  to  us  in  history  men  endeavored 
deliberately  and  expHcitly  to  demonstrate  hypotheses  and 
to  refute  the  contradictory  hypotheses,^  with  the  result 
that  argumentation  or  logical  discourse  began  itself  to 
receive  notice  and  to  become  an  expHcit  problem.  When 
demonstration  became  thus  the  object  of  study,  the  science 
of  logic  was  born.  Mathematics  also  was  bom  in  this 
period  and  developed  rapidly.  Tradition  assigns  its  be- 
ginnings to  the  earUest  Ionian  philosophers,  but  its  most 

1  The  Pythagoreans.  This  central  fire  was  not  the  sun.  The  sun 
itself  was  believed  to  be  a  planet  shining  by  reflected  hght  from  this 
central  fire.  Unfortunately  this  view  did  not  become  the  accepted 
hypothesis  of  Greek  astronomy. 

2  E.  g.,  Parmenides  and  Zeno. 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  87 

marked  progress  took  place  in  Italy  and  was  due  in  particu- 
lar to  the  Pythagoreans.  Several  important  elementary 
properties  of  numbers  ^  were  noticed,  and  many  elemen- 
tary theorems  in  plane  geometry  ^  were  discovered  and 
demonstrated.  The  elements  of  harmonics  also  were 
studied. 

Finally,  we  have  evidence  that  the  science  of  human 
anatomy  and  physiology  had  begun.  This  evidence  is  to 
be  found  not  only  in  the  masterful  knowledge  and  keenness 
of  observation  of  human  anatomy  shown  in  Greek  art 
but  also  in  such  discoveries  as  the  flux  and  reflux  of  the 
blood  between  the  heart  and  the  surface  of  the  body,^ 
and  in  medical  writings  that  have  come  down  to  us  in 
which  primitive  religious  medical  beliefs  are  explicitly 
rejected.^    Though  we  know  but  little  regarding  the  meth- 

^  Such  as  the  incommensurabiUty  of  some  lines  in  terms  of  the 
integers,  e.  g.,  the  hypotenuse  of  a  right-angled  triangle  whose  other 
two  sides  each  equal  unity.  This  seems  to  have  been  the  first  step 
toward  the  discovery  of  irrational  numbers  (e.  g.,  V2  ).  Again, 
such  as  some  properties  of  the  continuum.  Zeno  proved  by  immortal 
arguments  that  if  the  only  numbers  are  the  natural  series  of  integers, 
our  ordinary  judgments  regarding  moving  bodies  lead  to  absurdities. 
At  his  time  no  other  view  of  number  had  been  entertained.  "Even 
rational  fractions  are  unknown  to  Greek  mathematics,  and  what  we 
treat  as  such  are  expressed  as  ratios  of  one  integer  to  another.  Still 
harder  was  it  for  the  Greeks  to  regard  a  surd,  for  instance,  as  a  num- 
ber, and  it  was  only  in  the  Academy  that  an  effort  was  made  at  a 
later  date  to  take  a  larger  view."  In  short,  Zeno  proved  "  that  there 
must  be  more  points  on  the  Une,  more  moments  in  the  shortest  lapse 
of  time,  than  there  are  members  of  the  series  of  natural  numbers." 
(Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.,  Part  I,  p.  85.) 

2  Such  as,  "The  square  of  the  hypotenuse  of  a  right-angled  triangle 
equals  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the  other  two  sides." 

*  Known  to  Empedocles. 

*  "The  true  spirit  of  Ionic  science  is  best  seen  in  some  of  the 
writings  ascribed  to  Hippocrates,  which  are  certainly  not  later  than 
the  fifth  century  B.  C.  In  the  treatise  on  The  Sacred  Disease  (ep- 
ilepsy) we  read — 

" '  I  do  not  think  that  any  disease  is  more  divine  or  more  sacred  than 


88        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ods  of  research  used  in  this  period,  the  records  of  the  few 
which  have  come  down  to  us  show  them  to  have  been  of 
a  genuinely  scientific  and  painstaking  character. 

3.  The  Eastern,  or  Ionic  philosophical  tradition. — Let 
us  now  follow  the  two  chief  courses  of  early  philosophical 
development,  the  eastern,  or  Ionic  and  the  western,  or 
Italic.  Not  that  either  tradition  was  isolated;  on  the 
contrary  they  mutually  influenced  each  other.  In  the 
earlier  days  of  the  period  especially,  the  East  influenced 
the  West;  and  in  the  later  days  especially,  the  West  in- 
fluenced the  East. 

Inheriting  from  religion,  it  may  be,  the  thought  of  an 
ultimate  power  (Fate)  dividing  the  world  and  keeping  it 
divided  into  four  great  realms,  the  fiery  heaven,  the  dark 
air  or  vapor,  the  ocean  and  earth,  the  eastern  thinkers  ^ 
became  interested  in  the  following  problems:  What  rules 
these  four  realms  of  the  world?  What  is  their  nature  ^ 
or  stuff?     May  not  some  one  of  them  be  the  ultunate 

others — I  think  that  those  who  first  called  this  disease  sacred  were 
men  such  as  there  are  still  at  the  present  day,  magicians  and  puri- 
fiers and  charlatans  and  impostors.  They  made  use  of  the  godhead 
to  cloak  and  cover  their  own  incapacity.'  And  again  in  the  treatise 
on  Airs,  Waters  and  Sites — 'Nothing  is  more  divine  or  more  human 
than  anything  else,  but  all  things  are  alike  and  all  divine. ' ' '  (Burnet, 
Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.,  Part  I,  p.  32  f.) 

1  In  later  days  strongly  influenced,  it  is  true,  by  the  thought  of 
western  thinkers. 

2  The  Greek  word  is  physis  which  was  translated  into  Latin  by 
the  word  natura,  whence  our  English  word  nature.  This  term  has 
had  a  long  and  varied  history.  "We  seem  able  to  distinguish  two 
main  heads  under  which  its  shifting  senses  may  be  grouped:  the 
static  and  the  dynamic.  Statically  conceived.  Nature  means  the 
system  of  all  phenomena  in  time  and  space,  the  total  of  all  existing 
things;  and  the  'nature'  of  a  thing  is  its  constitution,  structure,  es- 
sence. But  it  has  never  lost  its  other,  dynamic,  side — the  connota- 
tion of  force,  of  primordial,  active,  upspringing  energy — a  sense 
which,  as  its  derivation  shows,  is  original"  (Cornford).  Both  mean- 
ings lurk  in  the  question  stated  in  the  text. 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  89 

stuff  or  physis  and  may  not  the  others  then  arise  out  of  it? 
How  do  the  individual  things  we  behold  about  us  arise 
out  of  these  more  nearly  ultimate  kinds  of  entity,  water, 
vapor  and  fire;  for  some  things  (such  as  an  animal's  body) 
seem  to  be  composed  of  earth,  water,  breath  and  fire? 
In  answering  these  questions  two  postulates  or  principles 
seem  especially  to  have  controlled  their  thought:  Q^ttoJ 
nothirf,q^  nothing  comss;  and  no  thing  can  really  he  annihi- 
Jaied^  That  is  to  say,  an  animal's  body  does  not  arise  out 
of  nothing,  for  all  the  stuff  of  which  it  is  composed  existed 
beforehand;  and  the  dead,  decaying  body  does  not  pass 
into  nothing,  for  the  earth,  air,  water,  fire,  or  stuffs  of 
which  it  is  composed,  continue  to  exist,  returning  to  the 
realms  where  they  belong.  Again,  when  wood  is  burning 
the  fire  does  not  come  from  nothing  nor  does  the  wood 
pass  away.  The  fire  must  all  along  have  been  in  the  wood 
and  after  the  wood  has  disappeared  we  must  believe  that 
the  fire,  smoke  and  ashes  account  fully  for  the  stuff  of 
which  it  was  composed.  The  fire  returns  (going  upward) 
to  the  realm  (the  heavens)  where  it  belongs,  the  smoke 
goes  to  the  realm  of  dark  air  where  it  belongs,  and  finally 
the  ashes  remain  on  the  ground  (the  earth)  where  they 
belong.  Thus  (as  we  should  say)  there  is  a  tendency  for 
the  four  great  realms  of  existence  to  maintain  themselves 
distinct  and  in  equilibrium.  The  individual  things  (e.  g., 
the  wood)  constitute  an  unstable  equilibrium  precisely 
because  they  are  of  many  stuffs  belonging  to  realms  to 
which  they  tend  to  return.  Hence  the  relatively  short 
duration  of  all  (individual)  things.  They  are  disturbances 
in  the  original  equilibrium  foreordained  by  the  ultimate 
law  or  ruler  of  the  world. ^    Starting  with  these  problems 

*  "And  into  that  from  which  things  take  their  rise  they  pass  away 
once  more,  'as  is  ordained;  for  they  make  reparation  and  satisfaction 
to  one  another  for  their  injustice  according  to  the  appointed  time,' 
as  he  (Anaximander)  says  in  these  somewhat  poetical  terms."     (A 


90        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

and  principles  the  eastern  science  led  the  way,  influencing 
and  in  turn  influenced  by  the  western  science,  until  it 
reached  its  goal,  the  atomic  theory  of  Leucippus. 

4.  The  western,  or  Italic  philosophical  tradition. — The 
western  thinkers  were  early  divided  into  two  distinct 
schools,  the  Pythagoreans  ^  and  the  Eleatics;  ^  and  though 
these  two  schools  had  some  traits  in  common,  their  in- 
fluence upon  later  thought  was  sufficiently  diverse  for  us 
to  keep  them  quite  apart  ui  our  study.  Though  both 
western  traditions  also  ]e.(\  toward  atomism,  their  total 
scientihc  influence  was  unlike  that  of  the  Ionic  tradition. 
In  the  beginning  their  leaders  were  directly  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Ionian  cosmologists  and  later  they  in  turn  in- 
fluenced the  eastern  tradition  and  helped  greatly  to  lead 
that  tradition  to  atomism.  Moreover,  the  Pythagoreans 
developed  their  own  atomism,  an  atomism  according  to 
which  the  ultimate  differences  between  the  atomic  entities 
are  those  obtaining  between  the  regular  geometrical  solids, 
as  the  tetrahedron  or  the  dodecahedron,  and  in  which 
discoveries  regarding  the  comparative  length  of  musical 
strings  also  played  a  part,  ^n  contrast_to  theJPythagO];:eans 
the  Eleatics  tended  to  reject  the  possibility  of  science;  and 
though  they  influenced  science  powerfully  through  their 

surviving  fragment  of  the  Greek  tradition  of  Anaximander's  doc- 
trines, translated  by  Burnet.) 

1  Pythagoras  and  his  followers.    The  school  survived  for  centuries. 

2  Parmenides  of  Elea  in  Italy,  a  seceder  from  the  Pythagorean 
school  and  a  severe  critic  of  all  early  cosmology,  and  his  followers. 
The  Eleatic  school  lasted  well  on  into  the  fourth  century.  The  word 
school  here  used  deserves  notice.  Precisely  as  the  religious  priest- 
hoods and  similar  societies,  found  so  often  in  the  earlier  days  of  civili- 
zation, formed  clubs  or  fraternities;  so  also  did  the  first  groups  of 
scientists,  the  cosmologists  and  the  physicians.  Of  these  the  Pythag- 
orean society  stands  out  as  a  marked  instance  not  only  as  a  secret 
society  but  also  as  a  fraternal  and  almost  monastic  order.  Even  to 
the  end  of  the  ancient,  or  Greco-Roman  period  this  tendency  of  the 
thinkers  or  scientists  to  form  schools  or  societies  persisted. 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  91 

keen  criticism,  they  themselves  tended  more  and  more 
fowarcTmere  mysticism.  Let  us  study  each  of  these 
traditions  in  turn. 

The  Pythagorean  tradition  remained  unUke  the  eastern 
tradition  in  four  important  respects.^  First  its  members  / 
tended  to  be  mystics  of  the  Apollonian  and  of  the  Orphic 
types;  whereas  most  eastern  thinkers  were  distinctly 
secular.  ^  This  mysticism  made  them  interested  in  the 
purification  of  the  soul  and  the  problems  of  its  origin, 
nature  and  destiny.  It  made  them  also  the  authors  of 
the  behef  that  was  to  play  so  important  a  part  in  the 
spiritual  Hfe  of  Greece,  the  belief  that  the  study  of  music 
and  mathematics  or  in  general  of  philosophy  purifies  the 
soul.  Finally,  it  made  them  the  authors  of  the  fost  and  \^ 
most  famous__arguments  for  thji  soul's  innn()rtalityj_and_it 
made  them  thenrst  psychologists.  The  second  important 
respect  in  whichlKe  Pythagorean^differed  from  the  eastern 
thinker  is  his  keener  interest  in  the  study  of  numbers  and 
s^eometrical  figures.  The  third  respect  is  tlie  emphasis  > 
placed  upon  form  as  opposed  to  matter  as  the  object  of 
scientific  study.  This  problem  of  form  is  the  obscure 
beginning  of  an  interest  in  what  the  modern  calls  the  math- 
ematical laws  of  nature  as  opposed  to  the  cruder  interest 
of  the  Ionian  cosmologist  merely  in  the  stuff  of  which 
things  are  composed.  Strange  to  say,  the  interest  began 
in  the  study  of  the  ratios  between  the  length  of  strings 
sounding  the  seven  or  eight  notes  of  the  Greek  musical 
scale.  The  Greek  word  for  form  is  idea  and  this  doctrine 
regarding  forms,  or  ideas  is  the  earher  stage  of  the  famous 

1  In  the  first  of  these  respects  it  is  closer  to  the  Eleatic  tradition. 

2  This  statement  should  be  qualified  with  the  further  statements 
that  there  was  a  small  division  of  these  thinkers,  some  later  Pythag- 
oreans, who  were  distinctly  secular  and  that  some  of  the  western 
leaders,  as  Xenophanes,  bitterly  attacked  the  anthropomorphic 
polytheism  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  and  taught  a  pantheism,  main- 
taining there  is  but  one  god,  the  world. 


4 


92        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

doctrine  of  ideas  of  Socrates  and  Plato  to  be  studied  best 
as  it  appears  in  the  Athenian  period.  The  fourth  respect 
in  which  the  Pythagorean  differed  from  the  early  eastern 
thinker  is  his  interest  in  astronorny  and  medicjne.  The 
eastern  thinkers  even  in~the  days  of  atomism  held  to  de- 
cidedly cruder  astronomical  hypotheses;  whereas,  as  we 
shall  learn,  the  Pythagoreans  are  the  ancestors  of  the  Co- 
pernican  hypothesis.  In  medicine  too  the  true  beginnings 
seem  to  have  been  in  the  West  and  the  later  famous 
medical  tradition  of  the  East  was  of  western  origin. 

Though  the  Pythagorean  school  contributed  more  to 
the  beginnings  of  the  special  sciences  in  Greece  than  did 
the  early  eastern  schools,  yet  jn  the  lon^  run  its  mysticism 
was  the  enduring  philoso'phical  influence  it  exerted  upon 
(Jreeirthought.  This  mysticism,  we  have  seen,  centered 
about  the  ancient  Orphic  doctrine  of  the  soul,  its  origin 
and  destiny.  The  soul  is  of  heavenly  origin.  It  lived  be- 
fore this  life  as  it  will  live  after  this  life.  Hence  it  is  not 
intimately  related  to  the  body.  Rather  the  body  is  its 
prison  or  is  a  suit  of  clothing  which  it  outlasts  and  discards 
at  death.  It  is  not  essential  to  the  life  of  the  soul  even 
that  the  soul  should  have  a  body.  Rather  in  the  heavenly 
life  of  the  soul,  its  best  life,  it  is  free  from  the  burden  of  the 
body  and  from  the  body's  limitations.  What  we  call 
birth  is  the  true  death  and  what  we  call  death  is  the  true 
birth.  Since  sin  (or  some  mysterious  catastrophe)  caused 
the  soul  to  fall  from  its  original  blissful  state  and  to  become 
incarnate  and  defiled  by  the  flesh;  man's  greatest  enter- 
prise is  to  find  the  way  back  to  heaven,  the  true  home  of 
the  soul.  Hence  by  purification,  by  overcoming  the  flesh, 
I      "  the  way  is  made  back  to  heaven.    In  its  crudest  forms  this 

mr  /purification  was  merely  a  matter  of  initiations  and  magical 
'  ^  J  i  /  sacraments,  but  in  its  noblest  forms  it  was  spiritualized 
^  'ftv'  \  and  rationalized.  The  true  life  of  the  soul  is  to  be  free  of 
jrt^       I'  ythe  flesh  and  of  all  fleshly  lusts  and  interests,  in  other 


\^ 


THE  EARLY  PERIOD  93 

words,  to  be  holy  and  to  be  intellectual.  Hence  the  true 
purification  is  to  overcome  all  worldly  interests  and  to 
become  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  God,  or  we  may 
say,  in  the  contemplation  of  the  good,  the  true  and  the 
beautiful.  Evidently  such  a  religion  is  other-worldly.  It 
tends  to  weaken  the  individual,  the  social  and  the  political 
ambitions  of  a  people,  those  interests  which  are  requisite 
to  produce  the  great  eras  of  progressive  civihzation,  such 
as  the  Periclean  age  or  modern  Europe.  However,  this 
is  the  religious  philosophy,  which  as  we  shall  see  in  later 
chapters,  became  the  typical  religion  of  Europe's  greatest 
minds  from  the  days  of  Plato  to  modern  times. 

The  other  western  school  of  philosophy  was  the  Eleatic. 
T^e  chief  tendency  of  this  tradition  was  to  criticise  science 
and  to  show  that  the  scienHfic  enterprise  is  futile.  Its 
criticism  of  science  was  extremely  keen  and  important  and 
forced  the  advocates  of  science  to  do  some  very  hard  think- 
ing. In  this  negative  way  Eleaticism  contributed  to  logic, 
mathematics  and  the  study  of  the  logical  foundations  of 
science  and  of  the  nature  of  science  more  than  any  other 
early  Greek  philosophy.  Indeed  we  owe  to  its  critique 
the  Greek  science  of  logic  which  remained  the  logic  of 
Europe  till  modern  times.  However,  in  a  positive  way 
Eleaticism  was  a  scientific  nihilism.  Its  chief  doctrine 
was  that  "^11  is  one,"  that  scientific  analysis  is  impossible, 
that  science  cannot  discover  any  structure  in  things  or  in 
the  cosmos,  and  therefore  that  science  cannot  truly  ex- 
plain. If  "all  is  one,"  all  multiplicity  and  variety,  all 
structure  and  order  are  delusions  of  our  senses.  As  a 
scientific  nihilism  Eleaticism  tended  to  drift  more  and 
more  into  a  fallacious  and  carping  criticism  of  science  on 
the  one  hand  and  into  an  empty  mysticism  and  obscuran- 
tism on  the  other  hand.^ 

^  It  was  reaching  this  stage  in  the  late  Athenian  period,  in  the  days 
of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 


94        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  further  study  read: 

Gomperz,  T.,  Greek  Thinkers,  Vol.  I,  80-98,  123-152; 
Plato's  Phsedo; 

Tozer,  H.  F.,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  1897,  19-74; 
Ball,  W.  W.,  Short  Account  of  the  History  of  Mathematics, 

1888,  1-30; 
Cajori,  F.,  History  of  Mathematics,  1894,  1-23; 
Burnet,  J.,  History  of  Greek  Philosophy,  1914,  Part  1, 1-101; 
Taylor,  A.  E.,  Aristotle  on  His  Predecessors,  1907. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Burnet,  J.,  Early  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.; 

Cantor,  M.,  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Geschichte  der  Mathe- 

matik,  3te.  Aufi.,  1907,  Bd.  I; 
Tannery,  P.,  Recherches  sur  I'histoire  de  I'astronomie  an- 

cienne,  1893; 
Tannery,  P.,  Pour  I'histoire  de  la  science  hell^ne,  1887; 
Milhaud,  G.,  Lemons  sur  les  origines  de  la  science  grecque, 

1893;  and  Les  philosophes-geometres  de  la  Gr^ce:  Platon 

et  ses  Pred6cesseurs,  1900. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    ATOMIC   THEORY 

1.  Important  stages  in  the  evolution  of  early  cosmology 
toward  atomism :  (a)  The  general  theory  of  transforma- 
tion.— From  the  beginning  of  Greek  science,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  eastern  philosophers  tended  to  beHeve  that  all 
things  in  heaven  and  earth  are  transformations  of  some 
one  thing,  or  primitive  stuff,  and  that  this  stuff  is  either 
water,  vapor  or  fire,.  Of  the  more  primitive  cosmologies 
one  thai  well  illustrates  this  beHef  in  transformation  is 
the  cosmology  of  Heracleitus.  ^  In  one  quite  simple  ^Ix/tf^ 
theory  Heracleitus  offers  an  explanation  of  the  entire      -  ^ 

perceptible  world,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  sky,  the  stars,  the 
moon,  the  motions  of  these  heavenly  fires,  the  lightning, 
the  clouds  and  rain,  night  and  day,  summer  and  winter,' 
the  earth  and  its  inhabitants.  He  includes  even  an  expla- 
nation of  sleep,  death,  and  alcoholic  intoxication.  His 
theory  has  four  chief  assumptions.  First,  the  primarv 
sti^ff  js_fire.  Second,  fire  .to  exist  has  to  be  Jed  and  as  it 
burns  it  gives  olTsmoke  or  smoke-like  stuff,  that  is  to  say, 
all  things  in  transforming  have  to  be  fed  at  one  side  as 
they  give  off  the  new  stuff  at  the  other  side.  Third,  there 
is,  as  it  were,  a  circle  of  stuff-transformation,  from  fire 
Back  tq^^rg:  to  wit,  fire  produces  smoke-hke  things  (storm- 
cToud,  ^rkness,  etc.) ;  these  produce  water;  water  produces 
earth-like  things;  these  again  produce  water;  water  pro- 

^  I  give  his  theory  very  briefly  and  only  in  as  far  as  it  illustrates  the 
preceding  statement.  He  was  really  a  reactionary  and  represents  a 
view  that  had  already  been  outgrown  by  some  of  his  contemporaries. 

95 


^xM/uUM 


96        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

duces  vapor;  and  vapor  produces  fire.  Thus  the  circle 
is  complete.    Fourth,  the  mental  i&  fire. 

With  these  four  assumptions  all  things  in  heaven  and 
earth  can  be  explained.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  "the 
path  upward,"  the  earth  transforms  into  water  (the  ocean), 
the  water  (the  ocean)  transforms  into  the  bright  vapor, 
the  vapor  transforms  into  the  fire  (the  bright  sky  and 
heavenly  bodies).  As  these  burn  they  give  rise  to  storm- 
cloud  and  darkness  (night).  Hence  comes  the  water 
(rain  and  ocean)  and  hence  in  turn  the  earth.  The  balance 
of  things  is  kept  up  by  these  transformations  being  equal. 
That  is,  as  the  earth  gives  up  water  it  is  fed  in  exchange 
by  water.  As  the  sun  gives  up  darkness  and  cloud  it  is 
fed  in  exchange  by  vapor.  But  this  balance  is  not  kept  up 
quite  perfectly  in  the  twenty-four  hours,  or  in  the  year, 
or  in  the  course  of  centuries.  The  result  is,  the  sun  gives 
up  so  much  darkness  that  it  gets  extinguished  (night). 
The  night  (darkness)  failing  to  be  fed  as  it  is  in  the  day- 
time by  the  heavenly  fires,  gives  up  more  than  it  receives 
and  so  becomes  extinguished  in  turn.  Hence  comes  the 
day  (fire).  Winter  similarly  results  from  a  lowering  of  the 
amount  of  heavenly  fire  and  summer  from  a  corresponding 
excess  of  heavenly  fire.  Finally,  in  the  course  of  ages 
there  is  a  similar  but  far  greater  excess  of  the  fiery  stuff 
which  means  world  conflagration  to  be  succeeded  by  a 
corresponding  shortness  of  fire,  the  birth  of  a  new  world. 
So  nature  goes  on  in  cycles.  It  is  all  one,  an  eternal  fire 
and  its  transformation.  The  world  is  ceaselessly  changing 
but  none  the  less  balanced  in  its  changes.  ^ 

If  we  keep  in  mind  the  points  made  in  the  preceding 
chapter  regarding  the  limited  information  of  the  first 
cosmologists,  especially  the  appearances  of  the  world  to 
primitive  perception,  and  the  seeming  simplicity  of  things 

'  I  omit  his  explanation  of  eclipses  and  of  the  phases  of  the  moon. 
Notice  that  we  have  by  his  theory  a  new  sun  every  day. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  97 

when  man  is  still  ignorant  of  their  complexity,  we  shall 
find  in  such  a  theory  as  this  of  Heracleitus  the  master 
work  of  a  genius.  ^  Given  only  the  data  of  ordinary  per- 
ception, his  explanation  was  nearly  adequate.  But  it 
could  not  long  remain  adequate  for  even  in  his  own  day 
new  data  had  been  added  by  more  careful  and  extensive 
observation;  and  even  with  his  data  his  theory  was  not 
quite  adequate,  for  it  offered  no  solution  of  the  problem: 
How  can  one  stufLtransform  into  another?  Let  us  turn 
to  this  latter  problem  and  consider  the  brilliant  solution 
of  it  finally  reached  by  early  Greek  philosophy. 

In  the  most  primitive  cosmologies  this  question:  How 
can  one  thing  transform  itself  into  another?  did  not  trouble 
the  thinker.  Possibly  a  vitalistic  or  animistic  way  of  re- 
garding such  events  not  only  sufficed  but  was  assumed  as 
a  matter  of  course.  That  is,  things  are  more  or  less  alive, 
and  as  such,  of  course,  they  change  and  give  birth.  But 
we  have  ample  evidence  that  this  question  soon  became 
paramount.  The  first  clear  cut  progress  was  the  hypoth-  ^Ui^t^'"'*^ 
esis  that  transTormation  is  KuU' rarefaction  and  conden-  , 

§ation.^  Notice  what  such  an  hypothesis  imphes.  It 
implies  that  what  appears  to  be  a  qualitative  change  {e.g., 
water  becoming  fire)  is  really  a  quantitative  change  (e.  g., 
water  is  merely  condensed  fire  and  fire  rarefied  water). 
But  the  first  conception  of  rarefaction  and  condensation 
probably  remained  quite  crude  and  naive  for  the  cosmolo- 
gist  seems  not  to  have  enquired  further  into  the  nature  of 
this  transformation.  Soon  however  this  enquiry  was  made 
with  an  astonishing  but  consistent  outcome.  Rarefaction 
and  condensation  presuppose  particles  and  empty  spaces 
between  these  particles.    That  is,  condensation  is  a  denser 

^  Or  should  so  find,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  other  thinkers  in 
his  own  day  had  already  outgrown  such  primitive  cosmologies  and 
that  Heracleitus  was  therefore  a  reactionary. 

^  Anaximenes. 


98        THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

or  closer  packing  of  discrete  entities,  and  rarefaction  is  the 
separation  of  such  entities  increasing  the  size  of  the  inter- 
vening spaces. 

Now  this  hypothesis  introduces  a  question  whose  final 
answer  even  modem  science  has  not  yet  given.  Are  we  to 
think  of  each  of  these  intervening  spaces  as  an  absolute 
vacuum  or  is  every  space  full?  In  other  words,  is  matter 
a  collection  of  ultimately  discrete  entities  or  is  it  one  in- 
finite continuum?  ^  The  first  answer  to  this  question  was 
offered  by  a  western  Greek  thinker.^  He  found  an  abso- 
lute vacuum  or  empty  space  an  absurdity.  Empty  space 
is  nothing,  and  nothing  cannot  exist  or  be  real.  It  cannot 
be  even  thought.  The  world  then  must  be  one  soHd  con- 
tinuous mass  or  plenum.^ 

A  further  conclusion  was  drawn  also  by  him  and  his 
followers,  the  Eleatics.  There  can  be  no  motion  and  no 
change  ^  for  both  presuppose  empty  space.  This  con- 
clusion is  of  course  paradoxical  but  it  was  thoroughly 
logical,  granted  motion  and  change  as  conceived  in  those 
days.  ^  And  of  course  it  follows  as  a  corollary  that  the 
world  is  uncreated  and  indestructible,  for  if  it  was  created 
it  must  have  come  from  nothing.  "And  if  it  came  from 
nothing,  what  need  could  have  made  it  arise  later  rather 
than  sooner?"  Finally,  that  which  exists  is  not  "divisible, 

^  In  the  words  of  modem  physics,  are  the  ultimate  entities  of  the 
physical  world  discrete  or  is  there  one  universal  continuous  ether  and 
are  these  so-called  discrete  entities  but  points,  let  us  say,  of  stress  in 
the  ether? 

2  Parmenides. 

2  By  Parmenides  thought  to  be  a  finite  sphere.  By  Melissus 
thought  to  be  spatially  infinite. 

*  Especially  evident  if  we  explain  change  as  due  to  rarefaction  and 
condensation. 

^  I  say  "as  conceived  in  those  days,"  for  we  moderns  can  conceive 
of  wave  motions  that  can  pass  through  a  continuous  fluid  without 
displacing  the  parts  of  the  fluid. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  99 

since  it  is  all  alike,  and  there  is  no  more  of  it  in  one  place 
than  in  another,  to  hinder  it  from  holding  together." 

But  all  of  this  is  the  redudio  ad  absurdum  of  the  first 
attempt  to  explain  the  world  as  a  continuum.  The  enter- 
prise of  science  is  not  to  refuse  to  admit  facts  but  to  ex- 
plain facts.  Now  motion  and  change  are  facts.  If  denying 
the  existence  of  empty  space  and  accepting  the  doctrine 
of  the  continuity  of  rhatter  we  fail  to  explain  these  facts, 
then  we  must  either  conceive  the  nature  of  continuity  in 
some  other  way  or  admit  the  existence  of  empty  space  and 
the  discreteness  of  matter.^ 

However,  the  immediate  pathway  of  Greek  thought  led 
the  cosffiologist  to  keep  on  assuminglEe  doctrine  of  con- 
tinuity.'  If  existence  contains  no  empty  space,  and  if  both 
Inotion  and  change  are  facts,  how  can  we  account  for  these 
facts?  The  answer  given  ^  is :  the  primitive  stuff  must  be 
of  several  kinds.  If  it  were  alike  throughout  and  if  there 
were  no  empty  space,  change  or  motion  would  produce 
no  alteration,  would  make  no  difference,  and  would  of 
course  be  imperceptible.  But,  if  we  assume  different 
types  of  stuff  {e.  g.,  earth,  air,  fire,  water,  or  hot  and  cold, 
and  moist  and  dry  stuffs)  then  change  and  motion  are  the 
rearrangement,  the  mixture  and  separation  of  different 
amounts  of  these  kinds  of  stuff.^ 

1  In  general,  the  latter  alternative  has  been  the  one  chosen  by 
science  from  those  ancient  days  to  our  own,  but  time  and  again  the 
doctrine  of  continuity  has  been  reasserted.  One  very  recent  reasser- 
tion  is  that  made  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  in  his  presidential  address 
before  the  British  Association.  Science,  1913,  38,  379,  417. 

2  By  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras. 

3  Let  us  picture  it  (for  illustration)  like  a  dough  made  by  mixing 
flour,  water,  milk,  sugar  and  butter.  Starting  with  each  separate 
and  stirring  them  together  produces  a  markedly  different  thing,  the 
dough.  Yet  the  dough  is  only  a  mixture  of  these  kinds  of  stuff. 
Moreover,  for  our  perception  (if  we  include  in  thought  also  the  in- 
tervening air)  the  mixing  has  not  involved  empty  space.    It  is  only  a 


100      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

To  other  philosophers  ^  the  Eleatic  doctrine  that  motion 
presupposes  empty  space  seemed  correct.  Accordingly 
they  took  a  second  pathway.  Motion  takes  place,  and  in- 
asmuch as  motion  presupposes  empty  space,  empty  space 
exists..  That  is  to  say,  empty  space  exists  between  the 
parts  of  the  world's  stuff  and  this  stuff  is  therefore  dis- 
crete. It  is  not,  however,  infinitely  divisible.  Rather  we 
must  picture  ultimate  indivisible  parts  and  hold  them  to 
be  (true  to  the  Eleatic  doctrine)  plena,  that  is,  both  contin- 
uous and  unchangeable.  Here  we  have  finally  the  atomic 
doctrine,  which  teaches  us  to  account  for  the  world's 
structure,  origin  and  changes,  and  for  the  nature  of  its 
different  contents  and  their  effects  upon  one  another,  in 
an  extremely  easy  way;  for  it  maintains  that  the  ultimate 
particles,  or  atoms  are  alike  in  stuff  and  are  unlike  only  in 
size  and  shape,  andlF  endeavors  to  explain  the  difference 
T)et ween  things  (e.  g.,  between  fire  and  ice),  and  the  changes 
wrought  in  things  (e.  g.,  the  melting  of  ice),  merely  by  the 
coming  together  and  the  separation  of  these  minute 
changeless  particles  of  different  sizes  and  shapes. 

(b)  The  origin  of  motion. — All  the  preceding  theories 
either  presuppose  or  deny  motion.  In  the  latter  case  the 
origin  of  motion  is  of  course  ruled  out  as  no  longer  a  prob- 
lem, but  in  the  former  case  it  remains  a  problem  of  great 
philosophical  importance.  Probably  at  first  this  problem 
was  ignored,  for  that  things  move,  was  taken  as  a  matter 
of  course.  That  is  to  say,  why  the  primitive  stuff  jnoves 
isjelt  tobe  no  more  a  problem  than  why  aZmn^creature 
move§]^  In  short,  motion  is  natural  to  all  things  and,  in 
this  vague  sense,  the  primitive  stuff  is  alive.  But  when 
motion  is  denied  or  declared  to  be  impossible,  the  origin 
of  motion  can  no  longer  be  ignored  in  this  naive  way. 

rearrangement  in  a  continuous  mass  of  the  different  stufifs  which 
compose  the  mass. 

1  Leucippus,  Democritus  and  their  school. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  101 

Still,  it  is  interesting  to  see  even  then  how  naively  the 
problem  is  solved.     Animism  is  not  given  up,  but  only 
one  step  is  taken  toward  giving  it  up.    ThejisualjOTJ^^ 
stu^or^bpd^jsjnjtsd^  but  now  a  new  sort  of 

stuff  is"assumed7m  distinction  from  air,  fire,  water,  etc.), 
a  moving,  niotion^giying  body.  This  originates  motion, 
this  unites,  sepai^es  ^oF mixes  the  ultimate  bodies  and 
brings  about  the  great  cosmic  changes  and  creates  our 
present  world  order.  This  motion-giving  stuff  or  body 
remains  evidently  animistic.  For  example,  by  one  philoso- 
pher ^  it  is  called  Love  and  Hate,  by  another  ^  Reason.^ 
Finally,  with^atomism  animism  is  abandoned^  for  the 
atomist  teaches^tKat  the'atbms  always  have  been  in  mo- 
tion, or  at  least  he  deliberately  assumes  their  motion  as 
ultimate  and  unaccountable. 

Whether  animistic  or  not  the  doctrine  of  all  these 
early  cosmologists  regarding  motion  is  a  distinct  and  great 
advance  over  primitive  thought.  lUranslp-s  the  motion 
of  thinqsjojhe  primitive  or  universal  stuff.  The  blowing 
of  the  wind,  the  storm,  the  motion  of  the  sun,  and  a  host 
of  other  events  are  no  longer  the  acts  of  independent 
living  entities  but  the  result  of  the  unceasing  activity  of 
the  primitive  body,  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  origin  and 
the  passing  away  of  each  thing.  In  short,  if  animism  re- 
mains, it  ceases  to  hold  of  the  particular  things,  and  holds 
only  of  the  world  at  large  or  of  the  primitive  body. 

(c)  Quantity  and  quality. — One  further  and  most  im- 
portant feature  of  the  progress  in  early  cosmology  should 
be  noticed.  If  we  explain  the  multitudinous  things  with 
their  varying  quaUties  by  purely  quantitative  changes 
in  some  one  or  more  primary  bodies,  we  are  thereby  re- 

'  Empedocles. 

2  Anaxagoras. 

3  We  find  in  these  stuffs  the  ancestor  of  the  modem  notion  of  forces 
or  energies. 


102      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ducing  the  number  of  ultimate  qualities.  That  is  to  say, 
all  of  the  qualities  were  regarded  by  the  earlier  cosmolo- 
gists  as  mixtures  of  a  few  elementary  kinds  of  body  or,  we 
should  say,  of  a  few  elementary  qualities,  such  as  cold  and 
warm,  rare  and  dense,  dark  and  light,  moist  and  dry. 
This  tendency  to  reduce  qualities  to  quantitative  changes 
in  a  few  primary  qualities  reaches  its  goal  in  ancient  atom- 
ism which  all  but  reduces  quality  completely  to  quantity. 
For  example,  the  differences  between_fire  a.nd_earth  are 
due  to  the  size  and  to  the  shape  of  the  atoms  rather  than  to 
some  difference  m  fundamental  qualitative  stiiff.  If  this 
tendency  had  worEedTts  effects  out  to  the  logical  extreme 
(as  it  has  in  modern  mechanics)^  then  the  fundamental 
stuff  itself  would  be  quite  robbed  of  quahty.  The  atom 
would  be  a  mere  moving  point.  Then  configuration  and 
motion  would  be  the  sole  notions  in  terms  of  which  every 
question  regarding  the  objects  in  the  world  about  us 
would  ultimately  have  to  be  put. 

2.  The  atomic  theory:  (a)  Its  principles. — Let  us 
now  sum  up  briefly  the  principles  reached  by  early  eastern 
Greek  science  in  the  atomic  theory  of  Leucippus.  (1)  Fate, 
or  an  ultimate  animistic  power  ordaining  the  realms, 
becomes  a  superfluous  hypothesis.  The  kinds  of  stuff  will 
order  themselves  in  the  cosmos  without  external  direction, 
for  they  will  do  so  by  a  process  that  isjnechanical.  (2)  The 
rising  and  the  passing  away  of  (individual)  thmgs  are  but  a 
coming  together  and  a  separation  of  the  elementary  stuffs 
of  which  they  are  composed.  That  is  to  say,  the  processes 
in  the  world  about  us  are  in  every  case  forms  of  mo^on. 
and  there  is  no  other  form  of  change.  Ultimately  what- 
everis,  is;  and  theref  credit  cannot  change.  It  can  move 
from^place  to  place,  and  it  can  combme  with  other  entities 
or  separate  from  them.    (3)  If  individual  things  are  formed 

1  In  modem  mechanics  the  atom  or  material  particle  is  merely  a 
moving  point,  whereas  in  the  ancient  atomism,  it  has  size  and  shape. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  103 

by  the  combining  and  the  separating  of  elementary  stuffs, 
then  these  stuffs  must  be  made  up  of  separate  parts  or 
particles.  In  other  words,  earth,  air,  fire  and  water  must 
be  granular  and  so  divisible.  We  should  not,  however, 
suppose  that  they  are  divisible  ad  infinitum.  Rather 
there  must  be  ultimate  indivisible  particles,  exceeding 
minute  but  truly  atomic.  In  short,  every thmg  is  made 
up  of  atoms.  (4)  If  all  change  is  motion,  and  if  all  the  differ- 
ent kinds  of  (individual)  things  are  due  to  the  coming 
together  and  the  separating  of  elementary  atomic  stuffs, 
then  the  differences  between  things  must  be  due  to  the 
quantity  and  proportion  of  their  elements.  In  other 
words,  quantity  rather  than  quality  joxplaim  these  differ- 
ences.  (Sy^ThisTeads  on  to  a  yet  profounder  principle,  ^a^ 
noFall  difference,  even  that  between  the  elementary  stuffs, 
be  purely  quantitative?  For  example,  may  not  fire  differ 
from  earth  merely  in  the  size  and  shape  of  its  atoms? 
This  hypothesis  would  explain  also  the  difference  in  be- 
havior of  the  various  stuffs.  For  instance,  if  fire  is  light 
and  mobile,  may  this  not  be  because  its  atoms  are  small, 
smooth  and  round;  whereas  the  atoms  of  earth  are  rough, 
irregular  and  larger?  (6)  If  the  world  is  but  a  cloud  of 
atoms  in  empty  space,  we  must  distinguish  sharply  be- 
tween the  world  as  it  is,  that  is,  as  it  is  known  to  science 
and  the  world  as  it  appears  to  our  untutored  senses.  The 
world  of  science,  the  world  of  reason,  the  real  world  is  thus 
sharply  contrasted  with  the  world  of  sense,  the  world  of 
appearance.  The  real  world  is  a  world  of  elemental  stuff 
and  its  variety  and  changes  are  purely  spatial  or  quanti- 
tative. The  world  of  appearance  possesses  a  vast  array 
of  different  things  and  their  qualities.  ThejieaJjBKQrliiJs 
ma^h^maticalam^quajit^  The_wprld_of  appearance 

isc^ualitative  and  non-mathematical.  (7)  Finally^rnolTows 
that  tGe  gods  of  reTigionTand  myth  are  quite  superfluous 
in  accounting  for  the  events  of  nature.  Nature  presupposes 


104       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

no  guidance,  for  what  takes  place  has  to  take  place.  ^- 
cessity  rules  everywhere. 

tiTshort,  there  exists  an  infinite  empty  void  called  space. 
In  this  space  are  an  infinite  number  of  exceeding  minute 
particles  of  different  shape  and  size.  As  to  stuff  or  quality 
they  are  all  alike,  for  they  differ  only  in  size  and  shape. 
These  particles,  or  atoms,  are  in  motion  in  all  directions. 
In  colliding  with  one  another  they  can  alter  one  another's 
path.  Finally,  some  of  these  atoms,  because  of  their  shape 
and  size,  are  more  mobile  than  are  others  (e.  g.,  the  atoms 
of  fire).  These  few  principles  are  sufficient  to  explain  the 
universe  in  its  infinite  variety  of  object  and  event!  Thus 
the  Greek  thinker  reached  the  famous  atomic  theory,  one 
of  the  most  brilHant  achievements  of  Greek  scientific 
thought. 

(b)  The  atomic  cosmology. — How  lucid  and  simple 
the  atomic  theory  of  Leucippus  was,  may  be  seen  from 
his  general  cosmology.  In  the  vast  stretches  of  space  the 
atoms  are  moving  in  all  directions.  The  larger  and  more 
irregular  atoms  are  more  liable  to  collide  and  hence  these 
atoms  are  the  most  retarded,  whereas  the  smallest  and 
roundest  are  the  least  liable  to  be  retarded.  "In  the  in- 
finite void  in  which  an  infinite  number  of  atoms  of  count- 
less shapes  and  sizes  are  constantly  impinging  upon  one 
another  in  all  directions,  there  will  be  an  infinite  number 
of  places  where  a  vortex  motion  is  set  up  by  their  impact. 
When  this  happens,  we  have  the  beginning  of  a  world;"  ^ 
and  the  visible  world  of  which  we  are  inhabitants  is  one 
such  vortex.  The  rough  and  large  atoms  have  been  forced 
to  the  center  and  form  the  solid  earth  on  which  we  dwell; 
and  the  atoms  that  are  more  and  more  smooth  and  small 
have  been  forced  to  the  outside  and  so  form  respectively 
the  famous  zones  of  water,  vapor  and  fire,  namely,  the 
ocean  and  rain,  the  cloud  and  vapor,  the  heavenly  fire  and 
1  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed..  Part  I,  p.  98. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  105 

the  sun,  planets  and  fixed  stars.  That  our  world  is  one  of 
these  vortices,  explains  the  motion  or  revolution  of  the 
heavens  and  the  heavenly  luminaries.  Again  since  our 
world  is  only  one  of  these  vortices,  there  are  other  worlds 
than  ours;  and  between  these  worlds  extend  vast  stretches 
of  comparatively  empty  space,  the  intermundia. 

(c)  The  significance  of  the  atomic  theory. — It  is  im- 
portant to  enquire  at  once  regarding  the  significance  of 
this  atomic  theory  of  early  Greek  science.  A  theory  can 
be  significant  in  at  least  three  ways: — (1)  by_destroying 
or  inhibiting  older  beliefs ;  (2)  by_arousing_interest  in  new 
probJemTand  by  suggesting  new  methods  of  investigation; 
(3y~by  what  it  itself  enables  us  to  explain  correctly.  This 
theory  was  most  significant  in  "destroying  olH' Xehefs  or, 
to  adopt  a  much  used  expression,  in  '^ enlightening"  the 
cultured  Greeks.  A  thoughtful  Greek  could  hardly  be- 
lieve that  the  universe  is  a  cloud  of  atoms  moving  about 
in  accordance  with  necessary  mechanical  laws,  and  at  the 
same  time  continue  to  believe  the  primitive  traditions 
and  superstitions  of  his  people.  The  worship  of  the  gods 
and  the  old  magical  rites  and  ceremonies  must  needs  seem 
to  him  utterly  ineffective  and  useless,  valuable  customs 
no  doubt  for  their  purely  psychological  infiuence  upon  the 
ignorant  and  unruly  masses  but  of  course  absurdities  for 
the  cultured  and  disciplined  man.  Hence  no  wonder 
that  the  spread  of  this  and  the  preceding  cosmological 
theories  would  result,  in  a  society  such  as  that  of  the  Greek 
world  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.  C.,  in  a  radical 
3^i2^fenmen^.  No  wonder  that  their  spread  was  opposed 
by  merroTconservative  tendencies.  In  this  first  respect 
early  Greek  science  and  in  particular  the  atomic  theory 
were  of  great  historical  significance. 

The  atomic  theory  was  of  some  but  of  decidedly  less 
significance  as  a  means  of  arousing  new  interests  and 
suggesting  new  methods  of  research.    It  suggested  prob- 


106      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PfHLOSOPHY 

lems  in  psychology,  physiology  and  medicine,  problems  in 
astronomy  and  physics,  and  finally  problems  in  morals  and 
poUtics.  But  it  really  failed  to  suggest  fruitful  and  feasi- 
ble methods  of  research.^  It  might  perhaps  have  done  this 
latter,  had  not  the  scientific  tradition,  so  brilliantly  begun, 
been  inhibited  by  Greece's  political  misfortunes.  But  his- 
tory records  astonishingly  little  well  directed  and  successful 
research  as  the  direct  outcome  of  Greek  atomism. 

Indeed  the  atomic  theory  illustrates  both  the  success 
and  the  failure  of  most  of  Greek  science.  Grejk  science 
enlightened.Jiut  it  seldom  really  informed.  It  destroyed 
oT3~beliefs,  it  aroused  many  new  interests,  but  it  seldom 
led  to  the_correct  or  final  solution^of  special  proBTems. 
THatls  to  say,  the  atomic  theory  was  an  instance  of  bril- 
liant speculation;  but  it  did  not  and  it  could  not  take  the 
place  of  discoveries  of  fact  or  solutions  of  special  problems. 
Such  discoveries  and  solutions,  and  such  alone,  could 
make  the  atomic  theory  an  important  instrument  of 
research ;  but  they  were  not  to  come  till  the  days  of  modern 
civilization,  till  the  great  modern  age  of  astronomical, 
physical,  physiological  and  chemical  discovery.^ 

But  what  is  the  significance  of  the  ancient  atomic  theory 
as  a  permanent  contribution  to  European  thought?  To 
answer  this  question  justly  and  correctly  is  difficult  for 
two  reasons.  On  the  one  hand,  atomic  theories  have  been 
most  fruitful  in  modern  physical  science;  ^  but  on  the  other 

^  Perhaps  the  lost  Democritic  writings  would  show  us  that  this 
was  not  the  case.  There  is  some  tradition  of  experiments  that  form 
a  beginning  of  chemistry,  and  chemistry  is,  of  course,  one  of  the  true 
lines  of  progress  beyond  Ionic  philosophy. 

"^  This  is  not  to  be  interpreted  to  imply  that  the  Greeks  did  not 
make  numerous  special  discoveries,  for  as  we  have  seen  they  did 
make  them.  It  means  that  they  failed  to  make,  for  example,  such 
discoveries  as  the  chemical  elements  which  would  at  once  verify 
the  atomic  theory  and  make  it  useful  in  further  research. 

^  Especially  in  mechanics  and  in  chemistry. 


THE  ATOMIC  THEORY  107 

hand,  even  we  moderns  are  not  in  a  position  from  which 
we  can  see  the  destmy  of  the  atomic  mechanistic  theory 
as"_a  general  world  hypothesis.  Even  with  our  wealth  of 
physical  information  we  cannot  yet  explain  by  a  rigorous 
atomistic  mechanics  water  transforming  into  ice  or  a  stick 
of  wood  burning,  not  to  mention  the  phenomena  of  living 
organisms.  In  other  words,  the  significance  of  mechanical 
atomism  as  a  great  philosophical  theory  is  still  an  open 
question.  However,  we  can  say  that  the  theory  has  been 
of  immense  significance  in  modern  science,  that  the  theory 
has  repeatedly  been  entertained  by  scientists  as  a  world 
hypothesis,  and  finally  that  no  other  theory  has  ever 
seemed  so  full  of  promise.  Hence,  though  the  atomic 
theory  of  the  Greeks  gave  the  ancient  world  few  means  of 
explaining  correctly  any  particular  object  or  event  in  na- 
ture, none  the  less  their  theory  was  one  of  the  most  bril- 
liant hypotheses  that  the  mind  of  man  has  ever  entertained. 
3.  Conclusion. — By  the  end  of  this  early  period,  when 
Athens  was  rapidly  becoming  "the  Hellas  of  Hellas," 
immense  progress  had  been  made  beyond  the  thought  at 
the  beginning  of  the  period  a  little  more  than  one  hundred 
years  before.  How  great  this  progress  was  we  can  measure 
best  perhaps  in  terms  of  the  changes  it  had  wrought  in  the 
behefs  and  customs  of  the  Greek  intellectual  classes  plainly 
visible  in  the  following  period.^  Several  important  signs 
of  the  revolution  rapidly  taking  place  can,  however,  be 
pointed  out  at  once.  First,  the  traditional  view  of  the 
world  was  evidently  breaking  down  and  giving  place 
either  to  a  philosophical  mysticism  descended  from  the 
Orphic  religion,  to  an  enlightened  skepticism,  or  to  a 
naturalistic  pantheism.^    Second,  the  older  nature  gods 

^  These  changes  we  shall  study  in  the  next  chapter. 

^  This  change  becomes  especially  apparent  in  the  new  use  of  the 
word,  god;  for  among  the  thinkers  the  rehgious  word,  god,  had  be- 
come a  secular  scientific  term  denoting  the  primitive  stuff  or  the 


108      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

such  as  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  were  being  secularized; 
for  these  were  no  longer  thought  of  by  the  scientist  as  gods 
but  as  enormous  rocks,  as  fire,  or,  in  general,  as  strictly 
natural  objects.  Finally,  the  mechanistic  explanations 
of  the  phenomena  of  nature  and  of  life  were  undermining 
the  ancient  beliefs  and  customs  of  the  types  we  have 
called  magic,  animism,  and  myth.  Especially  is  this  notice- 
able in  the  rise  of  Greek  medical  science  with  its  natural- 
izing of  disease  and  curative  methods  and  with  its  mechan- 
istic conception  of  life,  growth,  and  death.  In  short,  to 
the  intellectual  classes  magic,  animism,  and  myth  were 
becoming  superstitions. 

For  further  study  read: 

Burnet,  J.,  Early  Greek  Philosophy,  2d  ed.; 
Gomperz,  T.,  Greek  Thinkers,  I,  316-369. 

world's  source  of  motion,  the  creative  force.  It  becomes  apparent 
also  in  the  direct  attack  upon  the  belief  in  anthropomorphic  gods. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   ATHENIAN    PERIOD 

1.  The  major  political  changes  in  the  Athenian  period. 

— Before  the  beginning  of  the  Athenian  period  two  great 
events  of  Greek  history  had  passed,  western  Asia  Minor 
had  come  under  the  poHtical  control  of  the  Persian  and  the 
Persian  invasion  of  the  Greek  continent  had  been  repelled. 
The  major  events  that  marked  the  course  of  historj^  during 
the  period  were:  first,  the  further  rapid  growth  in  wealth 
and  culture  of  the  city-state  of  Athens  and  the  rise  of  the 
Athenian  empire  in  the  ^gean  world;  and  second,  the 
disastrous  wars  between  the  rival  Greek  states  of  the 
Greek  continent.  The  close  of  the  period  was  marked 
by  the  rise  of  the  Macedonian  power  and  the  incorpora- 
tion of  the  city-states  of  Greece  into  the  Macedonian 
empire. 

2.  Athens  the  center  of  greatest  Greek  culture. — In 
the  early  period  of  Greek  science  the  chief  centers  of  cul- 
ture had  been  the  cities  of  western  Asia  Minor  and  of 
southern  Italy  and  Sicily.  Now,  in  the  Athenian  period, 
Athens  becomes  rapidly  the  leader  and  remains  the  in- 
tellectual capital  of  the  Mediterranean  world  until,  in  the 
succeeding  periods,  other  cities  share  with  her  this  honor, 
but  share  it  only  at  the  time  the  glory  of  Greek  art,  litera- 
ture and  thought  is  waning.  As  Athens  grows  in  wealth 
and  political  power  she  becomes  the  home  of  the  most 
wonderful  artistic  and  intellectual  achievements  of  Medi- 
terranean civilization,  the  home  of  the  great  sculptors  and 
builders,  the  home  of  the  great  dramatists,  the  home  of 

109 


no      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  great  historians,  the  home  of  the  great  philosophers, 
and  later  the  home  also  of  those  schools  which  may  be 
called  the  first  universities. 

3.  The  age  of  enlightenment. — The  first  half  of  the 
Athenian  period,  that  is,  the  fifth  century,  is  often  called 
the  age  of  enhghtenment.  By  an  age  of  enlightenment 
is  meant  a  period  in  which  the  intellectual  classes  are  rap- 
idly increasing  in  number  and  in  culture.  Before  such  an 
age  there  may  be  the  intellectual  leaders  and  their  immedi- 
ate pupils  but  there  is  no  large  intellectual  class.  If  at 
such  a  time  the  doctrines  of  the  intellectual  leaders  become 
widely  diffused,  or  if  for  any  other  reason  the  class  of  the 
intellectually  gifted  "is  roused  from  its  dogmatic  slumber" 
and  becomes  alert  to  new  problems  and  new  solutions 
of  old  problems,  then  we  speak  of  such  a  change  within  a 
people  as  "the  enlightenment."  Usually  an  enlighten- 
ment implies  a  radical  change  in  the  habits  or  customs  of 
at  least  a  large  class  of  the  people,  a  radical  change  in  their 
religion,  politics,  and  morals,  and  a  radical  change  in  their 
conception  of  the  world  and  of  life. 

From  the  nature  of  man  it  follows  that  such  a  period 
can  be  seriously  destructive;  for  it  is  often  easier  to  break 
an  old  habit  than  to  build  the  new  habit  by  which  it  should 
be  succeeded.  Thus  it  is  easier  to  lose  the  religion  of  one's 
childhood  than  to  acquire  a  better  religion  in  its  place,  and 
easier  to  learn  to  distrust  the  laws  of  one's  land  than  after- 
ward to  learn  to  respect  a  new  constitution.  In  short, 
an  enlightenment  can  easily  be  negative  only  and  then  it 
results  chiefly  in  moral  and  intellectual  skepticism.  How- 
ever, even  this  negative  influence  of  enlightenment  is 
essential  to  a  people's  progress;  for  progress  seldom  means 
merely  the  adding  of  new  habits  without  the  inhibiting 
of  old  habits. 

Although  the  early  period  of  Greek  thought  saw  the 
rise  of  most  of  the  new  and  radical  doctrines,  the  Athenian 


THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD  111 

period  witnessed  the  rapid  spread  of  these  doctrines  and 
the  rapid  enlargement  of  the  intellectual  classes  especially 
among  the  continental  Greeks.  Of  course,  the  pre- 
Athenian  age  had  itself  to  be  enlightened  or  it  would  have 
lacked  intellectual  leaders,  for  these  leaders  are  the  chil- 
dren of  their  day;  but  the  succeeding  period  had  not  only 
the  leaders  but  also  the  time  to  assimilate  the  new  science. 
Moreover,  the  Athenian  period  had  besides  this  advantage 
of  time  the  advantage  also  of  an  extremely  stimulating 
environment,  a  state  in  the  height  of  its  prosperity  and  of 
its  political  power;  for  Athens  in  these  days  had  the  wealth 
to  build  and  to  make  beautiful,  it  had  the  intercourse  with 
other  peoples  that  tended  to  make  it  a  cosmopolitan  city, 
and  it  had  the  free  institutions  that  favor  the  spread  of 
information.  Thus  it  became  a  center  that  could  attract 
from  the  entire  Greek  world  the  men  of  great  talent. 
No  other  city  of  either  the  sixth  or  the  fifth  century  was 
in  this  respect  the  equal  of  Athens  in  the  days  of  Pericles. 
4.  The  field  of  the  enlightenment. — What  was  the 
scope  of  the  Greek  enlightenment  in  the  fifth  century? 
Positively,  it  included  the  extension  of  two  interests  among 
the  people;  the  interest  in  the  common  affairs  of  humanity 
and  the  interest  in  culture.  Negatively,  it  included  a 
weakening  of  the  blind  obedience  to  religious,  moral  and 
social  custom.  The  growing  interest  in  the  common  af- 
fairs of  humanity  resulted  from  the  growth  of  the  city- 
state  out  of  the  independent  villages  with  their  patriarchal 
government;  and  this  interest  in  fellow  Greeks  grew  yet 
larger  as  the  city-state  became  in  turn  the  great  center  of 
commerce  and  the  seat  of  empire.  With  the  city-state 
came  also  democracy  and  with  democracy  came  instead 
of  inherited  power  and  privilege,  power  and  privilege  that 
had  to  be  acquired.  But  to  gain  great  influence  in  a  de- 
mocracy requires  either  inborn  talent  to  lead  and  to  con- 
trol one's  fellows  or  an  excellent  training  that  has  given 


112      THE  .HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

one  skill  and  insight  in  all  matters  of  public  interest,  and 
frequently  both  of  these.  In  other  words,  Greek  democ- 
racies were  now  offering  to  all  their  young  citizens  of  talent 
the  opportunity  to  win  the  most  desired  of  prizes  but 
prizes  to  be  won  only  by  competing.  Thus  grew  a  demand 
before  unequalled  for  instruction  in  all  the  arts  that  make 
the  social,  the  legal  and  the  political  leader;  and  to  meet 
this  demand  arose  a  class  of  itinerant  teachers  called  soph- 
ists. These  teachers  varied  greatly  in  ability,  in  skill 
and  in  information ;  but  the  important  fact  is  the  evidence 
given  by  their  large  number,  by  the  great  distances  they 
often  came  and  by  the  high  pay  they  received,  of  an 
eagerness  for  the  type  of  culture  they  professed  to  in- 
still. 

In  such  writers  as  Herodotus,  Euripides,  and  Thucydides 
we  have  clear  evidence  of  the  change  that  was  taking  place 
in  the  moral  and  religious  life  of  the  intellectual  Greek. 
The  old  stories  of  the  gods  were  no  longer  taken  seriously. 
Religion  was  becoming  less  provincial  and  less  supersti- 
tious. Customs  were  being  criticised  and  studied.  The 
customs  of  foreign  lands  were  being  examined  with  interest 
and  their  diversity  was  being  noted  and  explained.  In 
general,  the  intellectual  Greek  was  outgrowing  local  and 
provincial  religion  and  morality  and  their  blind  dog- 
matism. 

5.  The  new  fields  of  scientific  development. — What 
further  fields  of  scientific  interest  did  the  new  culture 
open?  First,  it  made  men  attend  to  public  speaking  and 
all  the  arts  therein  employed.  These  arts  are  logical 
shrewdness  and  trickery,  grammar  and  rhetoric.  As  a 
consequence  we  find  much  of  the  subject-matter  of  these 
sciences  made  the  object  of  reflective  research  by  many 
of  the  sophists  and  their  pupils.  With  the  beginning  of 
this  reflective  research  the  sciences  of  logic,  grammar,  and 
rhetoric  truly  began;  and  these  subjects  have  remained 


THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD  113 

a  field  of  study  and  practice  from  those  days  to  our  own. 
For  centuries  upon  centuries  they  remained  a  chief  part 
of  the  elementary  curriculum  in  the  schools  of  Europe, 
a  curriculum  which  we  may  say  was  first  established  by 
these  itinerant  teachers  of  Greece  in  the  fifth  century. 

Second,  increased  interest  was  aroused  in  morals  and 
politics  and  these  customs  also  were  made  the  object  of 
reflective  study.  As  other  customs  began  unreflective  or 
blind  habits,  so  did  morals  and  politics;  for  the  morals  and 
laws  of  a  primitive  people  are  merely  customs  obeyed  with 
the  blindness  of  an  hypnotic  trance  and  therefore  without 
reflection.  Reflection  upon  such  matters  can  begin  only 
when  the  people  become  acquainted  with  the  customs  of 
other  lands,  when  new  customs  are  forced  on  them,  when 
their  own  customs  commence  to  conflict  with  one  another, 
or  finally  when  an  increase  in  population  and  in  wealth 
and  its  distribution  compel  a  change  of  custom.  Now  the 
sixth  and  fifth  centuries  were  such  times  of  change  of  law 
and  constitution;  for  these  were  the  days  when  the  old 
tribal  and  patriarchal  government  was  transforming  into 
the  constitutional  and  democratic  government  of  the 
city-state.  As  a  consequence  the  people  became  accus- 
tomed to  see  the  laws  changed  and,  more  than  this,  to  see 
them  made  by  men.  Again,  a  wider  acquaintance  with 
other  peoples  was  attracting  attention  to  the  marked 
differences  and  even  contradictions  between  customs  as 
viewed  by  the  observer  going  from  land  to  land.  As  a 
result,  this  was  a  period  in  which  the  people  of  Greece  were 
discovering  that  laws  are  not  divine  but  man-made,  that 
the  authority  behind  law  is  not  God  but  society.  This  in 
turn  caused  a  distinction  to  be  made  between  nature  and 
custom;  nature  is  inborn,  original  and  divine,  whereas 
custom  is  man-made,  changing,  fallible  and  authoritative 
only  as  far  as  society  enforces  obedience.  This  distinction 
between  nature  and  custom  has  remained,  as  we  shall 


114      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

see,  with  European   thought   from   those   days   to  our 
own.^ 

This  contrast  between  nature  and  custom  is  philosophi- 
cally of  greatest  importance.  As  we  have  seen,  the  original 
authority  behind  law,  religion  and  all  other  custom  is  the 
group  mind.  Custom  is  obeyed  because  no  one  even 
dreams  of  disobeying  it,  it  is  obeyed  because  of  the  tre- 
mendous power  of  social  approval  and  disapproval,  and 
it  is  obeyed  because  of  blind  belief  in  its  divine  origin  and 
in  the  du-e  consequences  that  follow  disobedience.  There- 
fore the  greatest  of  revolutions  in  man's  intellectual  life 
is  the  discovery  that  custom  is  not  divine,  but  man-made, 
fallible,  calling  for  criticism,  and  having  as  its  only  right- 
ful and  ultimate  basis  of  authority  the  approval  of  human 
insight  and  judgment.  When  this  revolution  is  complete 
we  have  the  freedom  of  thought  in  politics,  morals  and 
religion  essential  to  intellectual  democracy  and  in  the  long 
run  essential  also  to  political  democracy.  But  of  course 
this  revolution  never  has  been  complete  and  probably 
never  can  be.  It  is  not  complete  by  any  means  in  the 
modern  world  and  certainly  was  not  in  the  ancient  world; 
still  the  fifth  century  in  Greece  must  ever  be  looked  upon 
as  the  time  when  the  true  spirit  of  democracy  first  became 
incarnate  in  the  lives  of  men.  From  those  days  for  cen- 
turies there  was  a  freedom  of  thought  never  since  equalled. 
This  does  not  mean  that  it  was  not  an  age  of  great  igno- 
rance and  superstition  as  compared  with  our  own  age  of 
scientific  achievement;  but  it  means  that  men  were  indi- 
vidually thoughtful  and  were  permitted  and  encouraged  by 

^  For  example  we  find  it  in  the  terms,  natural  and  revealed  religion, 
the  former  the  inborn  universal  religion,  the  religion  of  reason,  the 
latter  the  religion  of  custom,  the  rehgion  of  the  speaker's  land.  Again 
we  find  it  in  the  contrast  between  natural  and  civil  law,  the  former 
not  an  enactment  or  custom  of  man  but,  as  the  ancients  would  have 
put  it,  a  law  of  nature,  of  the  reason,  of  God. 


THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD  115 

society  to  think  hard  and  to  think  as  individuals.    Men 
were  free  philosophically. 

For  further  study  read: 

Tucker,  T.  G.,  Life  in  Ancient  Athens,  1906; 

Zimmern,  A.  E.,  The  Greek  Commonwealth,  1911; 

Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civihzation,  275-371; 

Plato's  Protagoras; 

Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  40-49; 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  art.  Sophists; 

Murray,   G.,  Euripides  and  His  Age   (Home  University 

Library) ; 
Nestle,  W.,  Thukydides  und  die  Sophistik,  in  Neue  Jahr- 

biicher  fur  das  klassische  Altertum,  1914,  17,  649-685; 
Grote,  History  of  Greece,  chap.  Ixvii. 
Monroe,  P.,  Textbook  in  the  History  of  Education,  1915, 

52-120. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Meyer,  E.,  Geschichte  des  Altertums,  Bd.  4,  2te  Aufl.,  85- 

272; 
Gomperz,  T.,  Greek  Thinkers,  Vol.  I,  255-272,  275-315, 

412-437,  497-519. 

6.  Scientific  progress  along  the  older  lines.^ — The 
preceding  period  had  seen  the  beginning  of  a  genuinely 
scientific  knowledge  in  fields  that  we  name  astronomy, 
geography,  mathematics,  biology  and  medicine.  What 
in  turn  was  the  progress  made  in  these  fields  during  the 
Athenian  period?  In  astronomy  the  bridge  was  built 
between  the  necessarily  speculative  astronomy  of  the 
earUer  study  of  the  heavens  and  the  highly  scientific  as- 
tronomy of  the  succeeding  periods  of  ancient  philosophy. 
At  least  two  important  details  must  be  mentioned.    First, 

'■  Any  knowledge  of  the  details  of  the  progress  in  the  fields  of  the 
special  sciences  made  during  this  and  the  following  periods  must  be 
got  from  books  dealing  with  the  history  of  the  sciences,  such  as  those 
to  which  the  reader  is  referred  at  the  end  of  this  section. 


116      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  habit  was  formed  of  conceiving  the  heavenly  bodies 
as  revolving  about  the  earth  as  a  center  in  great  spheres; 
and  unfortunately  through  the  inJQuence  of  Aristotle  this 
conception  became  the  fixed  hypothesis  of  Greek  astron- 
omy in  later  times.  Second,  the  earth  and  the  heavenly 
bodies  were  finally  conceived  to  be  spheres.  This  latter 
belief  was  based  upon  genuinely  scientific  grounds,  such 
as  the  shape  of  the  moon  during  its  phases  and  the  chang- 
ing altitude  of  the  stars  as  one  travels  north  and  south. 
In  geography  decided  progress  was  made,  due  to  the  more 
extensive  travelling  of  studious  Greeks.  Of  such  travellers 
the  most  famous  are  Herodotus  and  later  Xenophon  re- 
turning with  his  ten  thousand  across  Armenia.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  added  knowledge  due  to  such  Greek  travellers 
there  is  evidence  of  knowledge  gained  from  long  sea 
voyages  made  by  Carthaginians  south  along  the  coast 
of  Africa  and  far  out  into  the  Atlantic. 

In  mathematics  and  biology  progress  was  easier  and 
much  greater.  In  both  sciences  the  influence  of  the  work 
of  the  earlier  and  contemporary  Pythagoreans  is  evident 
as  the  source  of  the  great  interest  of  the  scholars  of  Athens 
and  elsewhere.  Athens  and  in  particular  the  school 
founded  in  Athens  by  Plato  became  the  center  of  mathe- 
matical research  and  in  this  period  the  greater  part  of  the 
mathematics  that  we  know  as  Euclid  seems  to  have  been 
discovered  and  formulated.  Moreover,  the  methods  of 
discovery  and  of  deductive  proof  exemplified  in  Euclid 
and  philosophically  most  significant  are  the  work  of  the 
mathematicians  of  this  time  and  especially  of  Plato  and 
his  pupils  in  the  Academy.^  This  was  also  the  period  in 
which  medicine  and  the  study  of  anatomy  had  their  birth 
as  sciences.     Hippocrates  of  Cos  is  usually  regarded  as 

^  Of  the  mathematicians  in  this  period  the  following  are  most 
prominent,  Archytas  of  Tarentum,  Hippocrates  of  Chios,  Eudoxug 
of  Cyzicus  besides  members  of  the  school  of  Plato. 


THE  ATHENUN  PERIOD  117 

the  father  of  medicine;  ^  at  least  he  and  the  school  of 
physicians  that  he  founded  at  Cos  raised  medicine  high 
above  the  primitive  medicine  of  earlier  days.  They  stud- 
ied the  empirical  symptoms  of  disease  and  the  observable 
working  of  various  methods  of  treatment.  In  short,  with 
the  school  of  Cos  began  that  empirical  medicine  which 
alone  could  be  the  correct  method  of  treating  the  sick  until 
men  knew  far  more  regarding  anatomy,  physiology  and 
the  microscopic  causes  of  disease,  that  is  to  say,  until 
recent  times.  However,  this  statement  does  not  mean 
that  anatomy  had  to  wait  until  modern  times  for  its  begin- 
ning. On  the  contrary,  its  beginning  belongs  to  this  period. 
The  school  founded  by  Aristotle  in  Athens  we  know  to 
have  studied  in  the  most  systematic  way  the  structure  of 
many  types  of  animals  and  a  little  later  to  have  begun  the 
study  of  the  different  forms  of  many  plants.^  Mental 
anatomy,  and  so  psychology,  also  began  in  this  period  in 
the  effort  of  the  Athenian  philosophers  to  analyze  the  fac- 
ulties of  the  human  mind,  in  which  endeavor  they  suc- 
ceeded in  differentiating  some  of  the  most  marked  types 
of  mental  traits,  such  as  sensation,  imagination,  thought, 
appetition  and  emotion. 

For  further  study  read: 

Tozer,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  75-121; 

Berry,  A.,  Short  History  of  Astronomy,  1899,  1-34; 

Ball,  Short  Account  of  the  History  of  Mathematics,  31-45; 

Cajori,  History  of  Mathematics,  23-34; 

Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization,  293-302. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Gow,  J.,  Short  History  of  Greek  Mathematics,  1884,  1-191; 

Cantor,  Vorlesungen  tiber  die  Geschichte  der  Mathematik. 

^  This  he  strictly  was  not  for  medicine  as  a  science  had  begim  in 
the  preceding  period  in  southern  Italy  and  especially  among  the 
Pythagoreans.  Hippocrates  himseK  may  have  been  indebted  to 
the  latter. 

2  Especially  under  Theophrastus,  the  successor  of  Aristotle. 


118      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

7.  The  major  philosophical  problems  of  the  Athenian 
period. — The  preceding  sections  of  this  chapter  form 
but  an  introduction  to  the  study  of  the  philosophical 
growth  attained  in  this  the  greatest  age  of  Greece  by  her 
greatest  thinkers;  and  we  are  now  ready  for  the  question: 
What  new  philosophical  points  of  view  were  won  and  what 
new  problems  were  raised?  What  great  strides  were  made 
in  philosophy  that  permanently  advanced  the  thought  of 
Europe?  Negatively,  we  have  already  described  the 
period  as  one  of  general  enhghtenment  which  implies  that 
there  was  besides  the  outgrowing  of  blind  custom,  a  fur- 
ther outgrowing  of  the  mythology,  magic  and  animism  of 
primitive  thought  beyond  the  stage  reached  in  the  pre- 
ceding period.  Positively,  the  philosophical  growth  is 
to  be  described  as  an  awakened  interest  in  two  new  and 
fundamental  problems:  First,  what  ultimatelj'  is  science 
and  how  is  science  related  to  the  commonplace  knowledge 
of  daily  life  which  even  the  scientist  shares  with  his  fellow 
citizens?  Is  science  possible;  and,  if  so,  are  it  and  common- 
sense  compatible?  Second,  if  our  laws  and  morals  are  but 
man-made  customs  and  are  without  divine  authority,  what 
is  to  be  the  thoughtful  man's  guide  of  life  and  with  what 
authority  does  this  guide  of  hfe  demand  a  following? 
Both  problems  remain  living  problems  to-daj%  and  the 
various  solutions  offered  by  the  great  thinkers  of  Greece 
remain  essentially  the  solutions  accepted  by  most  modern 
thinkers. 

These  several  problems  and  the  solutions  offered  for 
them  can  be  studied  by  us  best  as  they  were  presented  by 
the  intellectual  leaders  with  whose  names  they  have  ever 
since  been  associated.  Moreover,  in  the  many  centuries 
that  have  followed,  these  leaders  have  never  permanently 
ceased  to  have  an  influence  upon  the  thought  of  Europe, 
an  influence  that  may  be  called  even  personal;  and  the 
writings  they  left  us  that  have  been  preserved,  promise 


THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD  119 

to  remain,  what  for  centuries  they  have  been,  text-books 
of  the  schools  of  western  civihzation.  Let  us  then  single 
out  from  among  the  many  great  intellectual  leaders  of  this 
period  for  a  closer  and  more  personal  study  five  of  the 
most  influential  and  greatest  of  Greek  thinkers.  The 
philosophers  we  shall  choose  are  Protagoras,  Democritus, 
Socrates,  Plato  and  Aristotle. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD; 
PROTAGORAS   AND   DEMOCRITUS  ^ 

1.  Protagoras. — Among  the  teachers  and  thinkers 
whom,  following  tradition,  we  still  call  sophists,  the  great- 
est seems  to  have  been  Protagoras  of  Abdera.^  Probably 
two  facts  in  the  intellectual  world  of  his  day  strongly 
influenced  him:  first,  what  seemed  to  him  the  utter  futility 
of  the  teachings  of  Parmenides  and  Zeno ;  and  second,  the 
differences  in  custom  and  law  observed  by  him  in  the 
several  states  through  which  he  travelled.  The  former 
fact  led  him  to  react  against  science,  that  is,  against  the 
entire  speculation  of  the  early  cosmologists ;  and  the  latter 
fact  caused  him  to  see  that  though  customs  differ  they  are 
adapted  to  the  actual  life  of  the  several  states  and  on  the 
whole  are  morally  and  politically  successful.  In  short, 
Protagoras  was  a  believer  in  commonsense  as  against 

1  In  my  account  of  the  doctrines  of  Protagoras,  Democritus, 
Socrates  and  Plato,  I  am  indebted  almost  entirely  to  Professor 
Burnet's  Greek  Philosophy.  His  interpretation  of  these  thinkers 
seems  to  me  at  least  probable;  whereas  the  traditional  and  conven- 
tional interpretations  do  not.  However,  the  student  should  be 
warned  that  all  interpretations  of  these  thinkers  remain  stUl  largely 
conjectural. 

2  Born  not  later  than  500  B.  C,  visited  Athens  at  least  twice, 
the  last  time  not  later  than  432  and  died  after  that  date.  He  had 
many  rich  pupils  and  taught  many  years  and  is  said  "to  have  made 
more  money  than  Pheidias  and  any  other  ten  sculptors  put  together." 
He  is  said  also  to  have  written  "elaborate  works;"  but  none  of  his 
writings  has  come  down  to  us  and  his  teachings  have  to  be  inferred 
chiefly  from  the  writings  of  Plato. 

120 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    121 

science  and  in  the  practical  political  and  social  experience 
of  mankind  as  against  the  doctrines  of  moral  and  political 
theorists.  He  was  an  empiricist  and  a  pragmatist.  Ac- 
cordingly, we  may  picture  him  (of  course  quite  in  fancy) 
teaching  somewhat  as  follows: — "You  philosophers  have 
done  much  hard  thinking  and  in  order  to  do  this  thinking 
you  have  assumed  as  principles  or  premises  what  seem  to 
you  indubitable  truths;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  you  all 
disagree  among  yourselves  in  both  premises  and  conclu- 
sions. Therefore  something  must  be  wrong.  You  all  ask 
mankind  to  give  up  believing  in  the  world  which  common- 
sense  and  daily  trial  have  shown  to  be  real  and  instead  to 
believe  in  a  world  of  atoms  or  worse  yet  in  a  world  without 
even  motion  or  change.  Again  something  must  be  wrong 
with  your  thinking.  Now  what  is  wrong  with  your  think- 
ing? Precisely  this,  that  it  is  mere  thinking,  that  it  is  a 
mere  air  castle;  for  there  is  but  one  way  to  find  out  what  is 
true  and  real  and  that  is  by  using  your  eyes  and  ears  and 
fingers,  by  perceiving  the  facts  of  the  world  about  you. 
This  is  precisely  what  mankind  has  been  doing  since  the 
beginning.  The  resulting  behefs  we  call  commonsense 
and  this  commonsense  hfe  has  fully  justified.  In  short, 
appeal  to  facts,  accept  commonsense,  but  stop  logical 
hairsphtting  and  this  endless  debate  that  is  merely  a  war 
of  words."    Let  us  picture  next  his  pragmatism. 

"To  this  you  philosophers  may  object  that  common- 
sense  in  one  land  differs  from  commonsense  in  another 
and  that  no  two  men  agree  even  in  matters  of  ordinary 
perception.  I  reply:  No  matter  if  they  disagree,  for  they 
are  viewing  things  from  different  standpoints  and  so  do 
not  see  quite  the  same  fact.  Of  course,  one  standpoint 
or  point  of  view  may  be  better  than  another  but  strictly 
speaking  we  should  not  reject  any  genuine  perception,  for 
a  genuine  perception  gives  us  fact.  Moreover,  here  again 
you  are  quite  misled  by  your  logic;  for  you  think  that 


122      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

consistency  is  the  test  of  truth,  whereas  mankind  cares 
little  about  consistency  and  rightly  cares  little.  Mankind 
is 'engaged  in  a  far  more  serious  enterprise  than  carrying 
on  a  debate.  Debating  is  a  mere  game  and  it  matters 
little  whether  you  are  right  or  wrong;  but  life  is  a  warfare 
where  if  you  are  wrong  you  meet  real  disaster  or  even 
perish.  Now  this  test  of  actual  life,  commonsense  has 
stood  and  continues  to  stand.  Hence,  if  beliefs,  customs 
and  laws  are  found  by  you  to  differ,  do  not  forget  that 
they  all  are  undergoing,  each  in  its  own  place,  each  in  its 
own  circumstances  the  most  severe  of  tests;  and  do  not 
forget  that  the  differences  between  beliefs  and  between 
customs  may  be  fully  justified  the  moment  you  consider 
the  circumstances  peculiar  to  the  particular  people  or 
individual  holding  the  belief  or  custom.  For  example,  I 
have  travelled  far  and  through  many  states  and  have 
seen  indeed  many  different  laws  and  customs;  but  what 
has  astonished  me,  is  the  fact  that  they  all,  as  a  rule, 
seem  to  work  well  and  seem  to  be  the  right  customs  for 
the  states  having  them.  Again,  I  have  met  many  men  of 
many  minds  and  habits;  but  here  too  the  astonishing  fact 
is  that  these  men  are  usually  successful  and  prosperous 
each  in  the  state  of  life  to  which  he  has  been  called."  This 
manner  of  thought,  which  we  have  pictured  as  that  of 
Protagoras,  is  distinctly  a  philosophical  attitude  and  one 
that  great  leaders  of  men  have  often  tried  to  teach  man- 
kind since  the  days  of  Protagoras.  For  that  matter  it  is 
an  attitude  which  every  human  being  unreflectively  takes 
much  of  the  time.  Commonsense  and  perception,  not 
science;  success,  not  argument:  is  a  usual  though  unex- 
pressed motto.  Thus  Protagoras  as  a  thinker  represents 
a  genuine  type  of  philosophical  thought,  the  philosophy 
of  commonsense. 

Let  us  consider  some  examples  of  the  use  Protagoras 
not  unlikely  made  of  his  philosophy.    He  may  have  said, 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     123 

"things  are  to  me  as  they  appear  to  me,  and  to  you  as 
they  appear  to  you,"  either  without  quahfying  this  state- 
ment or  without  any  wish  to  do  so.  In  this  case  he  seems 
to  teach  a  doctrine  from  which  we  can  infer  that  no  error 
is  made  by  color-bHnd  locomotive  engineers,  by  landsmen 
judging  of  distance  on  the  sea  and  by  insane  men  having 
hallucinations.  Such  a  doctrine  (though  it  is  usually  care- 
fully qualified)  is  called  naive  reahsm  and  has  been  severely 
condemned  by  philosophers  from  the  days  of  Protagoras 
to  our  own  time.  Again  Protagoras  may  also  have  refused 
to  accept  such  mathematical  doctrines  as  that  a  line  tan- 
gent to  a  circle  has  but  one  point  in  common  with  the  cir- 
cle; for  he  may  have  maintained  (if  this  correctly  inter- 
prets the  reports  that  have  come  down  to  us  regarding 
him)  that  his  eyes  told  him  better,  that  any  such  hne  he 
inspected  has  actually  some  appreciable  part  in  common 
with  the  circle  to  which  it  is  tangent,  that  is,  such  a  line 
has  not  a  point  but  a  segment  in  common  with  the  circle.^ 
If  your  mathematical  reasoning  does  not  agree  with  this, 
then  the  disagreement  but  again  shows  the  danger  of 
abstract  thinking  divorced  from  perception.  As  a  final 
example  of  how  Protagoras  may  have  applied  his  philoso- 
phy to  particular  problems,  let  us  take  one  not  improbable 
interpretation  of  a  saying  of  his  regarding  our  knowledge 
of  the  existence  of  the  gods.  You  cannot  by  reasoning 
show  whether  the  gods  exist  or  not;  and,  we  may  add, 
neither  can  we  perceive  them  to  exist.  What,  you  then 
ask,  are  we  to  believe?  Protagoras  may  be  pictured  as 
replying:  "Believe  what  mankind  for  centuries  upon 
centuries  has  believed  and  found  spiritually  satisfying." 
The  foregoing  account  of  the  teachings  of  Protagoras 
may  be  summed  up  by  quoting  the  words  of  Professor 

iSome  modem  philosophers  (such  as  Berkeley  and  Berkeleians 
such  as  Karl  Pearson)  would  agree  in  principle  with  this  statement. 
So  this  matter  debated  by  Protagoras  is  still  debatable. 


124      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHH^OSOPHY 

Burnet.  Protagoras  "was  a  strong  believer  in  organized 
society,  and  he  held  that  institutions  and  conventions 
were  what  raised  man  above  the  brutes.  So  far  from  being 
a  revolutionary,  he  was  the  champion  of  traditional 
morality,  not  from  old-fashioned  prejudice,  but  from  a 
strong  belief  in  the  value  of  social  conventions.  In  this 
sense,  he  not  only  professed  to  teach  'goodness'  himself, 
but  he  believed  it  was  taught  by  the  laws  of  the  state  and 
by  public  opinion,  though  not  perhaps  so  well.  He  had  a 
profound  belief  in  the  value  of  such  teaching,  and  he  con- 
sidered that  it  begins  in  early  childhood.  The  less  he  could 
admit  anything  to  be  truer  than  anything  else,  the  more 
sure  he  felt  that  we  must  cleave  to  what  is  normal  and 
generally  recognized."  ^ 

2.  Democritus. — The  second  of  these  great  thinkers  of 
the  Athenian  period  was  Democritus  of  Abdera.^  We  may 
remember  him  best  and  most  easily  by  associating  with 
him  three  facts:  first,  his  contribution  to  philosophical 

^Another  "sophist"  whose  name  at  the  very  least  deserves  to  be 
remembered  by  the  student  is  Gorgias.  Gorgias  {fl.  c.  430)  was  a 
teacher  of  rhetoric,  whose  "influence  on  Athenian  literature,  and 
through  it  on  the  development  of  European  prose  style  in  general, 
was  enormous."  Under  the  influence  of  Eleatic  doctrine  as  well  as 
that  of  Protagoras,  he  went  further  than  Protagoras,  denying  alto- 
gether the  possibility  of  science.  As  the  ethical  counterpart  of  this 
doctrine  it  is  not  unlikely  that  he  taught  the  doctrine,  might  is  right, 
the  ethics  of  the  strong  man,  the  hero,  the  superman.  The  point  of 
view  represented  in  modern  times  by  Carlyle  and  Nietzsche  (Burnet). 

2  Flourished  about  415  B.  C.  Little  is  known  about  his  Ufe.  He 
was,  as  Protagoras,  from  Abdera  in  Thrace.  He  is  said  to  have 
visited  Egypt  and  Athens,  though  this  tradition  is  doubtful.  He  was 
a  disciple  of  Leucippus  and  became  the  head  of  a  school,  that  is,  he 
was  not  a  sophist  or  travelling  teacher.  Though  an  excellent  and 
prolific  writer  his  writings  have  not  come  down  to  us.  Hence  his 
doctrine  is  largely  an  inference  from  tradition  and  from  a  few  frag- 
ments. In  the  text  I  have  purposely  given  his  doctrine  a  too  modem 
dress,  believing  its  essential  nature  would  thus  stand  out  clearer  to 
the  eyes  of  the  student. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    125 

thought  was  offered  directly  as  an  answer  to  the  teachings 
of  Protagoras;  second,  he  was  a  pupil  and  follower  of  Leu- 
cippus  (though  he  had  also  Pythagorean  teachers);  third, 
he  made  a  permanent  contribution  to  the  theory  of  human 
knowledge  and  of  human  morals. 

Democritus  disagreed  radically  with  Protagoras  regard- 
ing the  authority  of  commonsense  and  social  custom  and 
defended  against  him  the  authority  of  science.  Democri- 
tus was,  to  use  modern  terms,  an  intellectualist  and  a 
rationalist.  He  did  not  regard  ordinary  sense  perception 
as  trustworthy  or  authoritative,  rather  he  believed  that 
perception  is  always  misinforming  and  misleading.  There- 
fore if  we  are  to  get  at  the  truth  and  at  the  nature  of 
things,  we  must  depend  upon  intellectual  insight  and 
thought. 

As  a  disciple  of  Leucippus  he  inherited  both  good  and 
bad  traits.  He  was  of  course  an  atomist  and  explained  the 
cosmos  and  its  origin  as  did  his  master;  and  he  was  a  thor- 
ough beHever  that  all  quality  is  but  hidden  quantity. 
Unfortunately,  as  an  astronomer,  Leucippus  was  far 
inferior  to  the  later  Pj^thagoreans.  For  example,  he  still 
held  the  older  Ionic  view  that  the  earth  is  flat  and  that  it 
floats  on  air.  This  reactionary  astronomy  Democritus 
seems  to  have  accepted  from  his  predecessor. 

However,  it  is  his  positive  contribution  to  philosophic 
thought  that  especially  deserves  our  study,  his  theory  of 
knowledge  and  his  theory  of  morals.  The  former  theory 
is,  in  the  modern  technical  phrase,  a  doctrine  of  repre- 
sentative perception.  To  understand  this  phrase  let  us 
see  one  consequence  of  granting  Democritus  that  the  true 
nature  of  the  objects  amid  which  we  live  and  to  which  we 
are  moment  by  moment  responding,  is  atomic.  For 
instance,  according  to  the  theory  of  Democritus  this  piece 
of  paper  upon  which  I  write  is  but  a  conglomeration  of 
minute  particles  of  matter  of  different  sizes  and  shapes,  so 


126      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

small  that  I  cannot  see  them  with  the  naked  eye  but  not 
so  small  that  I  cannot  at  least  think  of  them  in  terms  of 
their  purely  geometrical  and  mechanical  properties.  Evi- 
dently, then,  the  paper  I  actually  perceive  is  not  precisely 
the  same  paper  as  that  of  which  science  speaks;  for  the 
former  is  one  white  continuous  sheet  of  paper  and  looks  in 
no  respect  like  a  cloud  of  dust,  whereas  the  paper  of  the 
atomist  is  remarkably  like  a  cloud  of  dust.  True,  I  shall 
be  helped  to  relate  the  paper  seen  with  the  paper  of  atom- 
ism, if  I  take  a  powerful  lens  and  look  at  the  paper  under 
this  lens ;  for  now  at  least  what  I  see  is  no  longer  a  smooth 
continuous  thing  but  a  rough  mass  made  up  of  thousands 
of  minute  intertwined  fibres.  And  a  high  power  micro- 
scope would  reveal  still  greater  complexity  and  irregular- 
ity. Indeed,  might  I  not  see  something  like  a  cloud  of 
dust  if  I  had  the  means  of  seeing  the  paper  magnified 
thousands  of  diameters?  Still,  though  this  would  help  me 
to  relate  the  two  papers,  it  would  make  only  the  more 
evident  that  there  are  two  distinct  papers,  the  paper  I  see 
with  the  naked  eye  and  the  paper  I  should  see  had  I  this 
hypothetical  instrument  that  could  enable  me  to  see 
things  as  Democritus'  atomism  describes  them. 

What  is  the  relation  between  these  two  distinct  papers, 
the  paper  of  perception  and  the  paper  of  science?  The 
answer  of  Democritus  to  this  question  is  especially  impor- 
tant; for  over  and  over  in  the  different  generations  of  Euro- 
pean thinkers  to  our  own  day  scientists  have  regarded  his 
answer  as  essentially  correct.  The  real  object,  thing  or, 
in  our  example,  the  paper  is  a  conglomeration  of  minute 
atomic  changeless  particles.  These  particles  can  move, 
can  combine  and  can  separate;  but  nothing  that  cannot 
be  described  in  these  terms  ever  takes  place  in  their  im- 
mortal career.  In  contrast  to  them  the  paper  is  merely 
a  temporary  combination  or  configuration  of  thousands  or 
millions  of  these  indestructible  atoms.    Moreover,  these 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     127 

atoms  are  always  very  busy;  and  could  I  see  them  as  I  can 
a  cloud  of  dust  or  of  insects  or  of  birds,  I  should  see  that 
no  member  of  the  group  is  ever  still,  and  that  the  group 
may  be  always  parting  with  individual  members  and 
gaining  other  members.^  What  becomes  of  the  many 
members  that  thus  separate  from  the  group  or  are  even 
shot  off  from  it  as  are  the  minute  globules  of  water  from  a 
glass  of  effervescing  mineral  water?  They  shoot  out  into 
all  directions  of  space;  and  some  of  them  bombard  my  eye, 
or  other  organ  of  sense,  and  cause  some  sort  of  disturbance 
in  my  nervous  system,  which  in  turn,  mark  well,  is  itself 
but  another  cloud  of  atoms.  Now  the  paper  that  I  see 
is  either  merely  this  disturbance  in  my  sensorium  or  some 
further  disturbance  caused  by  it  that  we  vaguely  speak  of 
as  my  mental  state  or  visual  sensation  of  the  paper.  Thus 
in  very  truth  there  are  two  papers,  the  paper  that  does 
the  bombarding,  the  paper  fifteen  inches  from  my  eye, 
and  the  paper  of  my  sensation,  the  paper  that  is  the  effect 
and  only  the  effect  of  the  bombardment  and  disturbance 
in  the  atomic  conglomeration  I  call  my  nervous  system. 
They  are  two  things,  for  the  latter  is  not  the  former  but  is 
only  a  representative  of  the  former,  somewhat  in  the  same 
sense  as  we  should  say  an  ambassador  is  not  a  people 
but  a  representative  of  a  people.  Hence  the  paper  3''ou  and 
I  see  is  not  the  paper  of  science  but  is  only  a  representative 
of  that  paper;  and  what  is  more,  of  course  you  see  a  differ- 
ent representative  from  the  one  that  I  see.  We  see,  as  it 
were,  different  ambassadors  from  the  same  nation  to  differ- 
ent foreign  governments. 

This  figure  of  speech  may  help  us  to  draw  two  further 
conclusions  of  importance.  First,  one  ambassador  does  not 
represent  his  nation  as  well  as  another;  for  one  ambassador 

^  To-day  we  should  state  this  and  the  following  points  in  terms  of 
undulations,  but  of  course  Democritus  lived  many  centuries  before 
the  undulatory  theory  of  light  was  suggested. 


128      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

may  thoroughly  mislead  the  country  to  which  he  is  sent 
and  cause  all  manner  of  mischief,  whereas  another  may 
truly  represent  the  thought  and  policy  of  his  motherland. 
Second,  our  reason,  that  is  our  foreign  minister  in  the 
figure,  has  to  infer  from  the  ambassador  and  his  words  the 
actual  state  of  public  or  governmental  opinion  in  the  for- 
eign country,  for  he  himself  cannot  behold  this  opinion 
directly.  In  other  words  and  without  figure  of  speech,  our 
perception  of  objects  varies  in  the  degree  to  which  the 
contents  perceived  are  genuinely  representative  of  the 
external  objects,  and  our  perception  is  always  an  infer- 
ential process.  In  still  other  words,  the  paper  seen  may 
be  in  some  respects  like  the  paper  of  science  whereas  in 
other  respects  they  may  be  totally  unlike,  and  we  must 
discover  through  science,  by  inference  that  is,  wherein 
the  two  papers  are  alike  and  what  is  the  true  nature  of  the 
external  object,  the  so-called  real  paper.  In  short,  the 
theory  of  representative,  or  inferential  perception  teaches 
that  what  you  and  I  perceive  is  not  the  external  or  real 
object  itself  but  mental  states  in  our  minds  caused  by  the 
external  object  bombarding  or  in  some  other  way  stimulat- 
ing our  organs  of  sense  and  that  we  can  learn  the  true 
nature  of  this  real  or  external  object  only  through  scien- 
tific research  and  inference.  Such  was  not  literally  but 
essentially  the  doctrine  or  theory  of  knowledge  taught  by 
Democritus. 

Let  us  mark  its  logical  consequence  and,  as  we  do  so,  let 
us  keep  in  mind  the  doctrine  of  Protagoras  against  whose 
teachings  it  was  maintained.  Instead  of  perception  being 
the  guide  of  life  and  an  adequate  insight  into  the  nature  of 
things,  it  is  far  from  being  either,  for  it  is  utterly  mislead- 
ing unless  correctly  used  by  the  reason  as  a  mere  basis  for 
further  study  and  inference.  The  real  world  is  never  to  be 
confused  with  the  world  of  perception,  for  the  world  of 
perception  is  a  mental  world,  a  mere  effect  of  the  real 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    129 

world  acting  upon  our  souls.  This  misleading  by  percep- 
tion and  this  confusion  of  two  distinct  things  are  especially 
evident  in  the  commonplace  illusions.  For  example,  to 
one  man  the  room  is  hot,  to  another  man  it  is  cold ;  to  one 
man  the  lantern  is  red,  to  another  it  is  yellow;  on  one  day 
the  hills  look  green,  and  on  another  they  appear  blue; 
to  the  hand  the  oar  in  the  water  is  straight,  to  the  eye  it 
is  bent;  to  the  untutored  child  the  moon  looks  near,  to  the 
astronomer  it  looks  far  away.  Thus  if  we  stop  with  mere 
perception  all  can  be  confusion  and  illusion;  but  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  we  do  not  stop  here  even  in  everyday  life,  for 
we  go  on  and  eliminate  from  the  perceived  the  illusory  and 
infer  the  real.  If  then  the  perceived  world  is  not  quite  the 
real  world  even  for  commonsense,  how  absurd  to  make  it 
so  for  the  student  of  reality! 

From  the  little  evidence  that  has  come  down  to  us  we 
can  infer  that  Democritus'  theory  of  conduct  was  as  im- 
portant as  his  theory  of  knowledge.  We  may  think  of 
him  as  arguing  somewhat  as  follows: — It  is  not  true  that 
custom  is  the  last  word  man  ought  to  say  regarding  the 
nature  of  what  is  right  or  wrong.  Customs  not  only  con- 
tradict one  another  but  are  often  disastrously  ill  adapted 
to  the  special  needs  of  the  people  under  their  sway.  More- 
over, as  a  matter  of  fact  men  criticise  the  customs  of  their 
land  and  endeavor  to  improve  these  customs  and  there- 
fore no  matter  how  obscurely  apprehended  by  the  re- 
former, there  must  be  some  principles  higher  than  custom 
by  means  of  which  criticism  is  possible.  To  use  the  tech- 
nical language  of  to-day,  either  the  changes  taking  place 
in  custom  are  and  must  remain  quite  blind  trial  and  error 
processes  or  there  must  be  such  a  thing  possible  as  a  science 
of  conduct.  In  short,  if  one  custom  is  better  than  another 
it  is  the  business  of  thoughtful  men  to  ascertain  wh3^ 

Why  is  one  habit  or  custom  better  than  another?  De- 
mocritus' answer  is  a  landmark  in  the  course  of  man's  in- 


130      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tellectual  history.  Happiness  is  and  should  be  the  goal  of 
life.  "The  best  thing  for  a  man  is  to  pass  his  life  so  as  to 
have  as  much  joy  and  as  little  trouble  as  may  be."  This 
does  not  mean  the  vulgar  pursuit  of  pleasure  and  especially 
the  pleasures  that  do  not  last,  for  "the  pleasures  of  sense 
are  just  as  little  true  pleasures  as  sensations  are  true  knowl- 
edge. 'The  good  and  the  true  are  the  same  for  all  men, 
but  the  pleasant  is  different  for  different  people.'  "  Fur- 
ther, true  pleasures  last  a  lifetime  whereas  false  pleasures 
end  in  sorrows  and  pain;  therefore  again  the  false  should 
not  be  mistaken  for  the  true.  Finally,  if  the  good  is  hap- 
piness, it  is  not  something  without  us  and  beyond  our 
control  as  riches  or  luxury;  rather  it  is  a  state  of  mind  as 
health  is  a  state  of  the  body,  and  it  is  to  be  attained  by 
"weighing,  judging  and  distinguishing  the  value  of  differ- 
ent pleasures."  ^  In  other  words,  two  important  principles 
are  to  be  laid  down :  First,  happiness  or  goodness  is  not  a 
matter  of  wealth  or  circumstance  but  is  a  state  of  mind; 
second,  goodness  depends  upon  knowledge  or  insight,  for 
the  wise  alone  are  capable  of  discriminating  the  true  from 
the  false  pleasure,  the  ignorant  are  not.  In  short,  the 
reason  why  any  man  is  bad  is  because  he  is  ignorant  and 
irrational. 

These  two  principles  deserve  to  be  carefully  studied  for 
two  reasons:  first,  they  are  typically  Greek  and  endure 
in  Greek  ethical  thought  for  centuries;  and  second,  they 
are  a  basis  of  a  religion  rather  than  of  a  science  of  human 
conduct.  Make  the  good  a  state  of  mind  and  divorce  it 
from  the  deeds,  the  events  and  the  social  enterprises  that 
make  up  human  life  and  history,  and  you  have  made  it 
merely  a  matter  of  personal  discipline.  With  this  done 
ethics  ceases  to  be  a  science  of  man's  enterprise,  the  enter- 
prise of  the  ages  of  history  and  the  enterprise  of  public 

^  Quoted  and  adapted  from  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy,  Part  I, 
p.  200. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    131 

and  private  life.  Again,  make  the  attainment  of  the  good 
a  matter  of  wisdom  rather  than  a  matter  of  law  and  con- 
duct and  you  turn  moral  philosophy  from  a  science  into  a 
rehgion ;  for  now  the  only  means  of  becoming  good  is  to  be 
a  philosopher  and  the  chief  reason  for  becoming  a  phi- 
losopher is  to  become  good.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  change 
from  a  science  of  conduct  to  a  religion  was  the  destiny  of 
Greek  ethical  philosophy  in  the  succeeding  centuries.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Burnet,  J.,  History  of  Greek  Philosophy,  Part  I,  105-125, 

193-201; 
Bakewell,  C.  M.,  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,  1907, 

57-66; 
Plato's  Protagoras  and  Theaetetus. 

^  As  we  shall  learn  in  later  chapters.     We  shall  also  compare  in 
contrast  with  it  the  work  of  the  Roman  jurists. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD: 
SOCRATES   AND    PLATO 

1.  Socrates.^ — Like  Democritus  the  famous  Athenian 
philosopher,  Socrates,  was  an  opponent  of  the  teachings 

1  Bom  about  470  B.  C,  died  399  B.  C.  Socrates  was  an  Athenian 
and  lived  and  died  in  Athens.  In  his  earUer  years  he  seem?  to  have 
studied  the  writings  of  the  older  philosophers,  to  have  been  the  pupU 
of  some  of  them  and  to  have  met  others.  In  particular  there  is 
evidence  of  his  acquaintance  with  the  teachings  of  Empedocles, 
Philolaus,  Anaxagoras  and  some  Ionian  philosophers.  Further,  there 
is  excellent  evidence  of  an  early  conflict  in  the  mind  of  Socrates  be- 
tween the  Ionic  cosmology  and  the  Italic  philosophy,  with  a  strong 
leaning  on  his  part  toward  the  Italic.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  have  been 
intensely  interested  in  the  ancient  folk-lore  and  in  the  noblest  ele- 
ments of  the  Orphic  and  Pythagorean  religions  and  to  have  combined 
in  his  character  shrewdness,  commonsense  and  mysticism.  He  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Parmenides,  Zeno  and  Protagoras  and  other 
sophists.  Of  these  Zeno  had  the  greatest  influence  upon  him,  which 
fact  in  part  at  least  accounts  for  the  Socratic  method,  the  method  of 
analyzing  a  theory  logically  by  cross-examining  some  exponent  of 
the  theory,  the  famous  Socratic  dialogue.  Socrates  seems  to  have 
attracted  attention  early  in  hfe  as  well  he  might,  for  no  Athenian 
before  him  had  ever  had  his  interests.  Young  men  seem  early  to 
have  been  his  admirers  and  to  have  gone  to  him  for  advice  regarding 
their  studies  and  teachers.  Socrates  was  in  several  campaigns  during 
the  Peloponnesian  war  and  was  known  for  his  remarkable  personal 
bravery.  In  these  days  he  seems  to  have  gathered  about  him  a 
closer  circle  of  friends  and  companions  that  seemed  to  others  at 
least  to  be  disciples;  but  he  never  seems  to  have  had  a  school  or  to 
,have  had  disciples  in  the  strictest  sense  of  that  word.  However  this 
may  be,  the  circle  of  Socrates'  influence  was  very  wide,  much  wider 
than  Athens,  for  it  included  especially  foreign  Eleatics  and  Pythag- 
oreans.   At  the  age  of  seventy  Socrates  was  brought  to  trial  on  a 

132 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    133 

of  Protagoras;  but  as  Democritus  represented  the  Ionic 
tradition  in  combating  the  teachings  of  Protagoras  Soc- 
rates represented  the  Pythagorean  tradition.  "After  the 
departure  of  Philolaus  for  Italy,  Socrates  became  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  the  head  of  the  Pythagoreans  who 
remained  behind;"  for  to  him  they  looked  as  the  most 
authoritative  exponent  of  their  common  philosophy. 
However,  he  was  a  leader  of  another  type  from  that  rep- 
resented by  Philolaus,  for  he  was  deeply  interested  in 
Pythagoreanism  as  a  philosophy  of  life,  or  as  a  religion; 
whereas  Philolaus  was  distinctly  scientific  in  his  interest. 
As  a  consequence,  we  find  Socrates  instructing  his  Pythag- 
orean followers  in  the  older  discarded  doctrines  of  Pythag- 
oreanism regarding  the  nature  of  the  soul  and  defending 
these  doctrines  against  the  newer  and  more  scientific 
teachings.  Moreover,  he  does  this  with  a  distinctly  re- 
ligious rather  than  a  scientific  interest,  for  he  wishes  to 
prove  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  to  outline  its  career 
in  the  life  beyond  death.  That  is  to  say,  the  more  scien- 
tific Pythagoreans  in  these  days  reflected  the  thought  of 
the  enlightenment  by  losing  interest  and  confidence  in  the 
Orphic  and  other  mystic  elements  in  their  philosophy  and 
by  increasing  their  interest  in  the  strictly  scientific  re- 
search carried  on  in  their  school,  which  meant,  as  we  have 

charge  of  impiety  and  was  condemned  and  executed.  But  impiety 
was  probably  not  the  real  ground  of  indictment;  rather  this  ground 
seems  to  have  been  poUtical,  for  Socrates  seems  to  have  criticised 
the  Athenian  democracy  and  its  leaders  and  to  have  been  opposed 
to  popular  rule  beheving  and  teaching  that  government  requires 
experts  as  truly  as  does  any  trade  or  craft.  As  well  hand  over  a 
sailing  vessel  to  the  hands  of  an  inexperienced  landsman  as  the  state 
to  the  control  of  the  folk.  (The  view  of  the  hfe  and  teaching  of  Soc- 
rates briefly  outlined  in  this  chapter  presupposes  that  we  have  in 
the  dialogues  of  Plato  an  endeavor  to  give  a  faithful  picture  of  the 
real  Socrates.  The  traditional  and  usual  account  of  the  life  and 
teaching  of  Socrates  does  not  accept  thispremise.  Cf.  Burnet,  Greek 
Philosophy,  Part  I,  pp.  126-128.) 


134      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

seen,  especially  mathematics,  astronomy  and  medicine. 
Of  the  mind  they  had  come  to  adopt  a  physiological  ex- 
planation, regarding  its  phenomena  as  a  mere  function  of 
the  body,  or  to  use  the  language  of  that  day,  as  an  attune- 
ment  of  the  body.  This  Socrates  did  not  do;  rather  he 
directly  combats  this  view  of  the  soul  defending  instead 
a  distinctly  animistic  doctrine,  according  to  which  the  soul 
is  the  vital,  or  life-giving,  principle  in  the  body  and  being 
itself  the  source  of  life  is  by  its  very  nature  immortal. 
In  short,  Socrates  had  in  him  a  deep  mystic  strain 
and  a  moral  enthusiasm  that  made  him  more  than  a 
philosopher,  indeed  that  made  him  for  centuries  one  of  the 
great  saints  and  religious  leaders  of  the  Greco-Roman 
world. 

2.  The  Socratic  doctrine  of  forms,  or  ideas. — How- 
ever, Socrates  was  not  merely  a  mystic,  for  he  was  also  one 
of  the  keenest  of  Greek  thinkers.  Two  of  the  philosophical 
problems  which  he  endeavored  to  solve,  were  virtually 
the  same  as  those  which  interested  his  contemporary 
Democritus:  first.  What  is  the  nature  of  science  and  how 
is  it  related  to  commonsense,  or  ordinary  knowledge? 
and  second.  What  is  the  nature  of  the  good  and  how  is  it 
related  to  the  widely  recognized  virtues  of  daily  life?  To 
both  questions  he  gives  answers  different  from  those  offered 
by  Democritus,  answers  that  clearly  indicate  the  influence 
of  Zeno  and  the  Pythagoreans. 

The  business  of  science  is  to  discover  "the  forms." 
This  word  "form"  can  perhaps  be  rightly  translated  by  the 
expression  "the  logical  prototype;"  and  it  can  be  most 
easily  illustrated  from  mathematics  and  biology.  In  nature 
we  never  find  the  triangles,  the  circles,  the  straight  lines 
or  the  equalities  which  are  to  be  found  in  geometry. 
Rather  what  we  find,  are  at  the  nearest  only  approxima- 
tions to  these  ideal  entities;  for  no  stick  or  rope  is  quite 
straight  and  without  thickness,  as  required  in  the  geometri- 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    135 

cal  straight  line,  and,  as  Protagoras  said,  no  actual  circle 
and  tangent  have  but  one  point  in  common,  and  finally 
no  two  bodies  are  precisely  equal  in  weight,  length  and 
number  of  parts.  To  use  an  illustration  given  by  Pro- 
fessor Burnet,  we  can  in  practice  approach  as  nearly  as 
we  choose  to  the  irrational  number  tt,  and  thereby  square 
approximately  the  circle;  but  actually  no  one  ever  has  and, 
we  believe,  no  one  ever  can  square  the  circle.  Now  the 
number  tt  is  a  form,  the  triangle  also  is  a  form,  so  are  the 
straight  line  and  the  circle  and  finally  so  is  equality.  Again 
let  us  illustrate  what  Socrates  seems  to  have  meant  by 
"the  form"  by  taking  instances  from  biology.  (Though 
Socrates  himself  does  not  seem  to  have  done  so.)  As 
anatomists  we  may  study  many  specimens  of  a  certain 
animal  type  to  ascertain  what  constitutes  the  type,  or 
what  differentiates  the  type  from  other  related  types. 
For  example,  what  is  the  cat,  that  is  the  type,  or  "form" 
Felts  which  the  lion,  tiger,  panther,  wild  cat  and  many 
other  species  exemplify?  In  short,  such  entities  as  those 
named  by  us  the  cat,  the  mammal,  the  vertebrate  and 
countless  other  animal  and  plant  types  are  forms.  The 
individual  cat,  let  us  say  a  particular  house-cat,  is  an  ex- 
ample of  the  type;  or,  as  we  may  put  it,  the  type  cat,  "the 
form"  is  exemphfied  in  this  specimen;  or  again,  this  cat 
partakes  of  the  nature  of  "the  form"  Felis.  What  then  is 
science?  Science  as  conceived  hy  Socrates  is  diagnosis.  It 
is  to  be  illustrated  by  the  physician  judging  of  the  nature 
of  an  ailment,  the  morphologist  deciding  the  tijpe  of  a 
plant  or  animal,  the  geometrician  discovering  the  nature 
or  type  of  a  curve,  or  the  moralist  interpreting  an  act  as 
just.  To  repeat,  the  task  of  science  is  to  discover  the 
nature,^  the  idea  or  form. 

In  saying  this  let  us  not  make  the  error  of  calling  these 
forms  classes,  for  such  they  probably  were  not  in  the  eyes 
^  The  physis. 


136      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  Socrates.  The  cat  is  indeed  a  class  (felis).  But  the 
cat  is  also  an  entity,  a  form;  for  as  Huxley  has  told  us,  the 
anatomist  after  studying  many  specimens  commences 
hterally  to  see  a  new  object,  the  typical  entity,  the  abstract 
entity,  in  this  instance,  the  cat-form.  Evidently  a  similar 
truth  holds  in  mathematics  also,  where  Socrates  the 
Pythagorean  would  probably  have  chosen  his  illustrations. 
Take  for  example,  the  triangle.  It  is  indeed  the  name  of  a 
class,  but  it  is  also  the  name  of  an  entity.  It  is,  as  I  am 
this  instant  picturing  it,  not  a  class  with  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  members  nor  is  it  a  mere  name,  rather  it  is  an  en- 
tity, "the  triangle."  It  is  literally  a  thing.  To  repeat, 
the  task  of  science  according  to  Socrates,  is  to  discover 
these  entities  or  forms  or  types:  especially  the  types  of 
geometrical  figures,  the  types  of  number,  the  nature  of 
the  good  and  the  form  of  the  beautiful. 

One  further  matter  needs  to  be  pointed  out  before  we 
can  fully  ascertain  Socrates'  answer  to  the  question: 
What  is  science?  As  Democritus  distinguishes  sharply 
between  the  sensible  world  of  objects  and  the  intellectual, 
or  scientific  world  of  atoms;  so  also  does  Socrates  distin- 
guish sharply  between  the  sensible  world  of  objects  and  the 
scientific  world  of  forms.  The  world  of  sense  perception 
is  not  reality.  It  is  appearance  and  is  therefore  something 
less  than  genuine  reality.  Reality  being  discoverable 
only  by  thought  or  intellectual  insight,  science  alone  can 
reveal  this  higher  world,  a  world  hidden  from  the  ignorant 
and  from  those  who  lack  the  mystical  love  or  curiosity 
that  impels  the  scientist  onward  to  explore  the  realms  of 
true  being.  In  other  and  clearer  words,  the  real  world  is 
not  the  world  revealed  to  our  senses  but  the  world  that 
science  gives  us  in  its  place;  and  the  relation  between  the 
two  worlds  is  that  between  the  appearance  of  things,  or 
the  world  seen  through  a  glass  darkly,  and  the  reality  of 
things,  or  the  world  seen  face  to  face.   Things  only  approxi- 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     137 

mate  the  forms.     Here  unite  in  one  man  Socrates  the 
mystic  and  Socrates  the  rationahst. 

3.  The  Socratic  doctrine  of  the  nature  of  the  good. — 
The  second  major  problem  in  the  philosophy  of  Socrates 
was  that  of  the  nature  of  the  good.  Indeed  for  him  this 
probably  seemed  the  more  important  of  the  two  problems. 
Of  course,  the  good  is  a  form,  the  form  in  which  all  good 
acts  participate;  but  what  is  the  definition  of  the  good? 
Socrates  does  not  tell  us  and  he  cannot  for  the  following 
reason.  The  good  is  the  very  foundation  of  the  world 
which  can  be  beheld  in  the  philosopher's  mystic  vision  but 
which  cannot  itself  be  analyzed  as  can  the  other  forms. 
Or  to  use  a  Socratic  figure  of  speech,  it  is  the  sun,  the  source 
of  all  light  and  therefore  of  all  vision  but  too  bright  and 
powerful  to  be  itself  the  object  of  sight  except  to  the 
strongest  eyes,  if  even  to  them.  Here  is  to  be  found  the 
height  of  Socrates'  mysticism,  a  mysticism  in  which  the 
very  secret  of  the  universe,  the  very  goal  of  science  is 
revealed  only  to  philosophic  contemplation.^  Socrates 
had  in  earlier  days  studied  the  Ionic  science  which  por- 
trays the  world  as  a  blind  play  of  mechanical  processes  and 
we  have  what  seem  to  be  his  own  words  of  disappointment 
at  the  dreadful  and  cheerless  picture  given  by  this  theory 
of  the  world.  To  him,  as  to  every  deeply  religious  and 
mystical  temperament,  such  a  world  could  not  be  satis- 
fying. Hence  the  revolt  in  which  he  goes  to  the  other 
extreme;  where  the  world  is  pictured  as  in  very  essence 
good  and  divine,  where  the  eternal  drama  of  nature  can 
be  understood  only  by  those  with  the  powers  to  see,  not 
with  the  eyes  of  sense  but  with  the  ecstasy  of  the  saint, 
the  heavenly  vision.  But  notice  that  this  divine  object 
is  not  the  god  of  the  folk,  the  god  of  the  ordinary  worship- 
per but  the  god  of  the  seer,  the  god  of  the  mystic  saint  and 

1  Here  Socrates  shows  the  influence  upon  him  of  the  Eleatics  rather 
than  of  the  Pythagoreans. 


138      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

philosopher,  the  god  whom  to  see  man  must  have  the 
amor  dei  intelleciitalis. 

Had  Socrates  taught  nothing  further  regarding  the  na- 
ture of  the  good  he  would  hardly  have  belonged  at  all  in 
the  history  of  ethics.  But  thus  far  we  have  spoken  only 
of  Socrates  the  Eleatic  moralist,  and  there  remains  to  de- 
scribe Socrates  the  Pythagorean  moralist.  This  I  shall  do 
briefly  in  terms  of  modern  psychology.  The  good  is  not 
mere  skill  or  efficiency  as  it  would  have  to  be  in  order  to 
be  taught  as  the  sophists  claim  to  teach  it.  For  example, 
a  murderer  might  be  as  skillful  as  the  physician  or  the 
sanitary  engineer.  On  the  contrary  the  good  is  mental 
discipline,  or  character.  In  man  there  are  numerous 
instincts  and  these  conflict  in  many  ways.  Each  instinct 
regarded  by  itself  is  neither  good  nor  bad;  for  each  is  a 
purely  blind  impulse.  Hence  it  is  only  the  rivalry  or  con- 
flict between  the  instincts  that  raises  the  moral  issue.  To 
illustrate,  I  tend  to  fight  and  lord  it  over  my  enemy,  but 
I  tend  also  to  avoid  danger  and  this  I  can  do  by  submitting 
to  him.  Which  shall  I  do,  for  it  is  impossible  to  do  both? 
Here  first  arises  a  moral  question.  How  would  Socrates 
answer  such  questions?  Not,  as  we  have  seen,  by  declar- 
ing some  of  our  instincts  to  be  good  and  others  to  be  bad; 
but  by  pointing  out  that  we  must  reconcile  our  instincts 
by  giving  to  each  free  play  as  far  as  such  freedom  is  con- 
sistent with  the  well-being  of  the  entire  man  or  by  keeping 
each  held  strictly  to  its  proper  function  in  the  enterprise 
of  life.  But  who  is  to  do  this  ruling  and  peacemaking? 
Certainly  not  the  blind  impulse  of  the  moment,  but  our 
intellect.  In  short,  the  moral  man  is  the  man  ruled  hy 
reason  rather  than  hy  impulse,  the  man  who  deals  justly 
with  all  his  instinctive  tendencies,  the  man  who  prevents 
any  one  of  these  instincts  becoming  his  master  and  there- 
fore the  tyrant  over  the  other  instincts.  Socrates'  favorite 
name  for  goodness  is  justice,  a  name  that  is  quite  appro- 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    139 

priate,  for  goodness  is  justice  within  the  commonwealth  of 
a  man's  total  nature.  The  Pythagorean  name  is  also 
appropriate,  the  harmony  of  the  soul,  for  a  good  man,  is 
a  man  at  peace  with  himself.  He  is  temperate,  he  is 
courageous,  he  is  wise.  He  is  the  first,  when  appetite  sub- 
mits to  reason.  He  is  the  second,  when  he  is  guided  by 
reason  in  determining  what  is  to  be  feared  and  what  is  not. 
He  is  the  third,  when  reason  is  the  ruler  over  all  his  im- 
pulses. Finally,  he  is  just  when  his  total  nature  is  thus  in 
harmony.  In  contrast  the  bad  or  unhealthy  soul,  the  un- 
just man,  is  he  who  allows  one  of  his  appetites  or  baser  im- 
pulses to  lord  it  over  the  reason  and  thus  to  be  Hfe's  moral 
tyrant. 
4.  Plato.^ — In  passing  to  the  philosophical  doctrines 

1  Bom  427  B.  C,  died  347  B.  C.  A  man  of  noble  family  whose 
ancestors  and  relatives  had  played  an  important  part  in  the  days 
of  Athens'  greatest  glory.  He  was  only  in  early  manhood  when 
Socrates  died  and  it  is  doubtful  how  far  we  may  call  him  the  im- 
mediate pupil  of  Socrates.  In  any  case  Socrates  was  known  to  him 
from  his  earUest  childhood  and  his  near  relatives  were  ardent  admirers 
of  the  great  master.  After  the  death  of  Socrates  Plato  did  much 
travelling  which  took  him  as  far  as  Sicily.  In  these  travels  he  became 
acquainted  directly  with  leaders  in  Greek  thought,  Eleatics  in  Me- 
gara  and  Pythagoreans  in  Magna  Grsecia.  Both  parties  influenced 
him  greatly.  He  returned  to  Athens  profoundly  interested  in  mathe- 
matics, astronomy  and  dialectics,  or  logic.  But  up  to  this  time  he 
lacked  a  philosophy  that  can  be  distinctly  called  Platonic  and  his 
literary  work,  including  his  greatest  masterpieces,  had  been  done 
seemingly  with  the  purpose  of  extolling  his  own  family,  of  revealing 
Socrates  to  the  world  and  of  indulging  a  wonderful  dramatic  talent. 
Upon  his  return  he  conceived  the  plan  of  founding  a  school  in  Athens 
after  his  own  pedagogical  beliefs.  He  was  already  familiar  with  the 
school  of  Euclid  in  Megara  and  with  the  school  of  Isocrates  in  Athens. 
To  the  latter  the  school  of  Plato  of  course  becomes  a  rival  establish- 
ment though  it  would  seem  a  friendly  rival.  Moreover,  the  custom 
was  rapidly  growing  for  young  men  from  distant  parts  of  Greece  to 
come  to  Athens  to  be  instructed.  Herein  the  fourth  century  differed 
from  the  fifth,  for  in  the  latter  century  teachers  came  to  Athens  rather 


140      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  Plato  we  have  come  to  the  thoughts  of  another  genera- 
tion in  the  Athenian  period;  for  we  have  passed  from  the 
fifth  centuiy  and  have  come  to  the  fourth,  to  the  year 
368  B.  C.  thirty  years  after  the  death  of  Socrates.^  Plato 
is  now  a  man  sixty  years  of  age  and  he  has  been  carrying 
on  the  work  of  directing  his  school  for  approximately 
twenty  years.  These  twenty  years  and  the  twenty  that 
immediately  follow  them  mark  the  turning  point  in  the 
history  of  Greek  thought.  Up  to  this  point  there  has  been 
steady  progress;  but  from  this  point  the  decline  begins, 
for  in  Plato  we  meet  Greek  philosophical  genius  at  its 
highest  point  of  achievement.  Unfortunately  a  full  and 
direct  account  of  the  instruction  and  research  proceeding  in 
the  Academy  during  these  years  has  not  come  down  to  us 
nor  has  a  full  and  systematic  account  of  the  teachings  of 
the  master,  its  founder.  What  we  have  instead  of  such 
direct  accounts  are  but  indirect  and  casual  statements, 
a  few  echoes,  as  it  were,  of  the  mighty  industry  hidden 

than  pupils;  but  now  the  pupils  also  are  coming.  The  founding  of 
Plato's  school,  the  Academy,  was  an  important  event  not  only  in 
the  history  of  education  but  also  in  the  history  of  Europe.  The 
school  became  a  genuine  seat  of  scientific  research  where  important 
further  steps  were  taken  to  solve  the  problems  of  mathematics  and 
astronomy  and  seriously  to  begin  the  classification  of  animal  and 
plant  life.  Out  of  it  came  virtually  the  famous  treatise  of  Euclid 
and  the  basis  of  the  later  Greek  astronomy.  Moreover,  the  school 
was  important  because  of  the  type  of  students  it  attracted.  Many 
of  these  were  men  that  were  to  be  rulers  and  legislators  in  many  parts 
of  the  Greek  world.  Thus  it  was  both  theoretically  and  practically 
a  school  of  political  science. 

All  of  Plato's  published  writings  have  come  down  to  us;  but  we 
quite  lack  his  lectures  which  no  doubt  would  give  us  a  different 
picture  of  the  thinker  and  his  doctrines  from  that  given  in  books 
meant  chiefly  for  the  intellectual  public.  These  writings,  Plato's 
Dialogues,  form  one  of  the  grandest  prose  collections  that  the  genius 
of  man  has  ever  produced;  and  they  bid  fair  to  be  read,  studied  and 
enjoyed  as  long  as  man  remains  civilized. 

1  The  probable  date  of  Plato's  Thesetetus. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    141 

behind  the  walls.  That  is,  we  have  the  casual  publications 
of  Plato  himself  dealing  with  a  few  matters  concerning 
which  he  wished  to  take  the  entire  learned  world  into  his 
confidence  and  we  have  the  casual  remarks  and  criticisms 
of  Aristotle  and  others  bearing  on  the  teachings  of  Plato 
within  the  school.  However,  we  have  enough  evidence 
to  give  at  least  a  probable  answer  to  the  question:  What 
were  the  interests  of  Plato,  to  what  influences  from  others 
was  he  indebted,  what  were  the  fields  of  his  research,  and 
what  were  the  general  results  of  his  thought  and  investi- 
gation? 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  not  think  of  the  Academy  as 
a  school  of  philosophy  in  the  narrow  sense  but  as  a  genuine 
university  in  the  modern  sense;  and  we  must  not  think  of 
Plato  as  a  professor  of  philosophy  but  as  the  president  and 
director  of  a  university,  and  perhaps  the  greatest  univer- 
sity president,  or  rector  that  the  world  has  ever  possessed. 
He  founded  the  school  and  managed  its  affairs ;  he  directed 
its  research  and  instruction  which  not  only  dealt  with  all 
the  learning  of  the  day  but  was  adding  important  newly 
discovered  information  to  every  department  of  Greek  sci- 
ence; finally  he  himself  by  his  own  thought  and  research 
was  contributing  to  this  remarkable  progress,  winning  for 
himself  a  name  immortal  as  long  as  men  study  logic, 
mathematics,  astronomy  and  philosophy.  The  research 
that  he  directed  and  in  which  he  took  part  extended  from 
mathematical  and  astronomical  investigation  to  the  so- 
lution of  the  political  problems  of  the  time;  and  the  phi- 
losophy that  he  taught  came  not  only  from  a  vast  experi- 
ence in  the  field  of  science  and  of  human  affairs  but  also 
from  the  fact  that  Plato's  entire  intellectual  environment 
compelled  him  to  be  a  philosopher,  we  might  almost  add, 
even  against  his  will. 

5.  Plato's  contribution  to  science. — Before  considering 
Plato's  place  in  the  history  of  European  philosophy  let 


142      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

us  briefly  sum  up  his  probable  contributions  to  mathe- 
matics, astronomy  and  poUtical  science.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  mathematics  contained  in  the  famous 
work  of  Euclid  came  largely  from  the  Academy  and  in  no 
small  part  through  Plato.  Again,  we  know  from  Plato's 
own  writings  that  he  was  thinking  out  the  solution  of 
problems  that  lead  directly  to  the  discovery  of  the  calcu- 
lus. Indeed  there  are  probably  only  four  or  five  names  of 
mathematical  discoverers  that  stand  between  Plato  on 
the  one  hand  and  Newton  and  Leibniz,  the  discoverers  of 
the  calculus,  on  the  other  hand ;  and  mark  that  two  or  three 
of  these  names  belong  to  a  time  as  recent  as  the  seven- 
teenth century.^  In  astronomy  we  have  directly  from  his 
writings  hints  of  his  teaching  in  the  Academy.  It  may  be 
going  too  far  to  say  that  Plato  is  the  father  of  the  helio- 
centric hypothesis;  but  it  is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that 
this  theory  has  in  him  a  forefather.  For  example,  not  only 
did  he  teach  with  the  Pythagoreans  that  the  earth  is  a 
sphere,  that  it  is  a  planet,  and  that  it  revolves  about  some 
central  body ;  but  he  looked  forward  to  finding  through  the 
discovery  of  some  planetary  system  a  way  of  accounting 
for  the  irregular  motions  of  the  planets  by  reducing  these 
motions  to  circular  motions  seen  from  a  moving  earth. 
In  political  science  Plato  was  the  most  influential  man  of 
his  day.  The  Academy  was  the  school  of  statesmen  and 
legislators  and  through  these  his  pupils  Plato  seems  to 
have  exerted  a  marked  influence  upon  the  legal  thinking 
of  the  time  and  thus  to  have  been  one  of  the  authors  of 
Hellenistic  law.  Hellenistic  legal  customs  and  thought 
not  unlikely  in  turn  influenced  the  legal  colonial  customs 
and  also  the  legal  thought  of  Rome  in  later  days  and 
so  we  can  with  probability  speak  of  the  Academy  as 
one  of  the  ultimate  sources  of  Roman  and  so  of  modern 
jurisprudence.  If  the  future  research  of  scholars  jus- 
^  Cavalieri,  Wallis,  Barrow. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     143 

tifies  these  inferences  ^  regarding  the  influence  of  Plato 
in  his  own  day  and  the  contributions  made  by  him  to  the 
science  of  all  time;  it  will  prove  no  exaggeration  for  us 
to  have  said  that  in  public  affairs,  in  science  and  in 
education  Plato  was  one  of  the  most  influential  men 
that  ever  lived.  And  we  have  not  yet  stated  his  con- 
tribution to  philosophic  thought! 

6.  The  Platonic  philosophy. — The  teachers  of  Plato  in 
philosophy  were  pre-eminently  Socrates  and  after  Socrates' 
death  the  Eleatic  and  Socratic  philosophers  in  Megara 
and  the  western  Pythagoreans  in  Sicily.  In  other  words, 
Plato  was  very  closely  related  to  the  same  major  move- 
ments in  Greek  philosophy  in  the  fourth  century  as  was 
Socrates  in  the  fifth  century;  but  the  new  centuiy  had 
brought  with  it  many  changes.  Socrates'  rather  crude 
doctrine  of  "forms"  required  either  to  be  discarded  or  to 
be  thought  through.  For  example,  if  there  are  forms  such 
as  the  triangle,  are  there  forms  also  of  hair,  of  dirt  and  of 
any  object  that  you  may  mention?  Again,  are  there  forms 
of  the  forms,  that  is,  does  the  triangle  itself  participate 
in  a  higher  form?  Still  again,  what  is  the  relation  between 
these  mysterious  forms  in  which  objects  participate  and  the 
objects  themselves?  Do  the  forms  literally  constitute  an 
existent  world  by  themselves?  Finally,  what  is  a  form? 
Briefly  stated,  the  Greek  answer  to  these  and  related 
questions  constitute  what  we  to-day  call  the  logic  of  predi- 
cation and  the  logic  of  classes.  In  other  words,  these  Greek 
thinkers  were  struggling  with  problems  whose  solution  is 
part  of  the  science  of  logic;  and  the  world  owes  to  Plato 
and  to  his  pupil  Aristotle  virtually  all  the  knowledge  of 
logic  possessed  by  Europe  until  in  the  nineteenth  century 
logical  discovery  really  once  more  began. 

The  growth  of  logic  is  historically  a  matter  of  great 

^  Of  Professor  Burnet,  to  whose  work  on  Greek  Philosophy  this 
chapter  is  directly  indebted. 


144      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

philosophical  importance.  Our  entire  conception  of  the 
nature  of  science  depends  upon  our  knowledge  of  logical 
theory;  for  our  logical  theory  is  little  more  than  a  summing 
up  of  our  scientific  experience  and  of  our  reflective  insight 
into  the  nature  of  the  enterprise  upon  which  we  as  scien- 
tists have  been  engaged.  If  then  our  logic  is  restricted  as 
was  Plato's  and  Aristotle's  to  the  logic  of  predication  and 
to  that  of  classes,  it  follows  that  we  shall  think  of  the 
business  of  science  as  finding  the  predicates  or  forms  of 
things  or  virtually  their  definition  and  the  forms  of  these 
forms  or  virtually  classification.  That  is  to  say,  the 
business  of  science  is  to  define  and  to  classify,  to  do  for  the 
world  at  large  what  the  morphologist  does  for  the  world 
of  animals  and  plants.  That  is,  the  morphologist  studies 
animals  and  tries  to  discover  what  constitutes  the  type,  and 
in  turn  he  studies  these  types  and  tries  thereby  to  discover 
the  higher  types  and  so  finally  to  get  the  system  that  we 
call  the  classification  of  animals.  Thus  if  science  is  limited 
to  definition  and  classification,  it  becomes  literally  a  uni- 
versal morphology. 

True  as  it  is  that  part  of  the  business  of  science  is  to 
define  and  to  classify,  as  biology,  chemistry  and  mineral- 
ogy witness  to-day;  still  this  is  evidently  not  the  whole 
enterprise  of  science,  as  even  Greek  mathematics  itself 
witnesses.  However,  the  strong  impression  that  this  is 
the  whole  of  science  became,  from  these  days  in  the  Acad- 
emy, part  of  European  philosophic  thought  and  continued 
to  be  a  part  until  the  rapid  growth  of  modern  science  in 
recent  centuries  made  it  evident  that  such  an  hypothesis 
of  the  nature  of  science  is  altogether  inadequate.  Now 
the  interesting  fact  that  follows  from  this  belief  that  defi- 
nition and  classification  constitute  science  is  the  resulting 
conception  of  the  universe,  a  conception  that  was  to  play 
a  major  part  in  European  thought  from  the  time  of  Plato 
until  in  the  seventeenth  century  science  returned  again 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    145 

to  the  world  conception  of  Democritus.  If  definition  and 
classification  are  all  of  science  and  therefore  if  we  are  to 
conceive  the  universe  in  their  terms  alone;  then  we  must 
picture  the  world  as  a  great  hierarchy  of  forms  extending 
from  the  concrete  individual  things  about  us,  the  objects 
of  our  sense  perception,  through  the  higher  and  higher 
forms  up  to  the  highest  form,  the  ultimate  form  or  funda- 
mental principle  of  all  things.  That  is,  the  world  is  a  vast 
classified  system  similar  to  the  classification  of  the  animals, 
except  that  the  classes  are  themselves  thought  of  as  things, 
forms  or  principles;  and  each  object  is  what  it  is  because 
of,  and  owes  its  existence  to,  the  forms  in  which  it  partici- 
pates or  that  are  working  as  secret  powers  within  it.  This 
world-picture  may  properly  be  called  the  feudalistic  con- 
ception of  the  world;  and,  as  we  have  stated,  it  came  from 
Socrates,  Plato  and  Aristotle  and  remained  a  typical  Euro- 
pean world-conception  until  a  new  civilization  in  modern 
times  brought  into  existence  a  new  science,  a  new  logic 
and  a  new  world-picture. 

7.  Plato's  defense  of  science  against  the  Eleatics  of 
Megara. — Closely  related  to  Plato's  logical  studies  was 
his  answer  to  the  nihilism  of  the  school  of  Megara.  It  is 
characteristic  of  most  periods  in  European  thought  even 
to  our  own  day  to  have  the  tradition  of  Parmenides  repre- 
sented by  some  thinkers  who  maintain,  as  he  did,  an  ex- 
treme monism,  or  the  doctrine  that  all  is  one  and  that 
science  is  therefore  fundamentally  erroneous.  Such  monists 
are  so  hypnotized  by  the  thought,  "the  world  is  one,"  that 
they  rest  intellectually  satisfied  with  some  type  of  mystical 
contemplation  or  ineffable  philosophy  and  at  the  same  time 
they  endeavor  to  show  the  futility  of  the  efforts  of  science 
to  study  the  world  in  its  parts,  to  find  the  elements  of  these 
parts  and  in  general  to  investigate  nature  inductively  and 
analytically.  In  Plato's  day  Parmenides  lived  again  in 
the  Eleatics  of  Megara.    As  Zeno  before  them  had  shown 


146      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

that  motion  was  impossible,  so  they  now  go  logically 
deeper  and  show  that  any  instance  of  predication  or  classi- 
fication whatsoever  is  self-contradictory.  What  is,  is; 
and  therefore  when  you  say  anything  further  about  an 
object  either  you  are  merely  repeating  that  it  is  what  it  is, 
or  you  are  saying  that  the  object  is  something  that  it  is 
not.  For  example,  if  you  call  two  objects  horses,  you  are 
at  once  involved  in  the  contradiction,  these  objects  are 
both  two  and  one,  are  both  alike  and  different,  or  again 
are  each  exclusively  and  precisely  what  it  is  and  yet  are 
both  horses.  Plato  at  once  shows  that  such  a  nihilist 
annihilates  himself,  for  the  moment  he  opens  his  mouth 
he  himself  does  precisely  what  he  condemns  science  for 
doing,  namely,  he  predicates.  But  of  course  it  is  not 
enough  to  split  hairs  with  such  a  monist,  for  science  has  to 
show  the  source  of  his  quite  honest  diflficulties  and  to 
make  clear  the  true  nature  of  her  enterprise.  Thus  Plato 
was  called  upon  to  analyze  predication  and  to  show  how 
two  objects  can  share  the  same  predicate.  This  he  did 
and  in  so  doing  be  became  again  a  founder  of  the  elemen- 
tary logic  of  predication  and  of  classes.^ 

8.  In  Plato's  philosophy  mathematics  is  the  fundamen- 
tal science. — Still,  it  is  not  Plato's  logic  that  makes  him 
seem  almost  a  modern  philosopher,  rather  it  is  the  place 
he  believed  to  be  held  by  mathematics  in  the  hierarchy  of 
the  sciences.  We  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter  how  Aris- 
totle regarded  biology  as  the  fundamental  science  and  in 
later  chapters  how  this  Aristotelian  doctrine  controlled 
European  thought  down  to  the  sixteenth  century  when 
Europe  again  came  to  believe,  as  did  Plato,  that  the  world 
is  fundamentally  a  mathematical  world,  and  that  mathe- 
matics is  therefore  the  fundamental  science.^    This  fact 

1  The  familiar  logic  of  our  elementary  text-books. 
^  Thus  it  is  a  rule  of  modern  philosophy  that  the  scientist  should 
always  endeavor  to  reduce  the  problem  he  is  trying  to  solve  to  a 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    147 

in  modern  European  history  and  the  fact  that  Plato  as  a 
philosopher  also  believed  that  the  world  is  essentially 
or  fundamentally  mathematical,  make  him  the  most 
modern  thinker  of  the  Greeks  and  make  modern  scientists 
Platonists  to  an  extent  that  few  of  them  apprehend. 
Indeed,  it  is  this  doctrine  and  the  doctrines  aforemen- 
tioned that  deserve  especially  the  name  Platonic  realism; 
for  by  realism  is  meant  (1)  the  battle  for  science  against 
mystical  monism,  (2)  the  making  of  logic  the  pre-eminent 
interest  and  labor  of  the  philosopher,  and  (3)  the  belief 
that  mathematics  is  the  fundamental  science  or  that  the 
world  is  fundamentally  mathematical.  Of  all  thinkers 
who  consistently  uphold  these  three  enterprises  or  prin- 
ciples, Plato  is  the  master. 

9.  The  world-soul.— Still,  Plato  was  not  altogether 
modern;  for  compared  with  Democritus  he  was  in  some 
things  a  reactionary,  as  was  Democritus  when  compared 
in  other  things  with  the  Pythagoreans.  Expressed  in 
simplest  form,  the  modern  beheves  that  the  world  is  a  sort 
of  perpetual  motion  machine,  that  motion  is  constant  and 
eternal,  that  the  world  is  not  in  need  of  entities  that  can 
keep  giving  it  new  supplies  of  energy.  The  atomists  of 
the  school  of  Abdera  beheved  much  the  same,  for  this 
school  taught  as  a  basic  premise  that  the  atoms  are  moving 
in  all  directions  through  space  and  they  presupposed  no 
other  source  or  control  of  motion.  In  contrast,  Plato  be- 
lieved in  a  doctrine  that  was  a  direct  descendant  of  primi- 
tive anunism.  The  mark  that  distinguishes  the  living 
creature  is  self-motion  and  the  entity  within  the  body 
that  makes  this  self-motion  possible  is  the  soul.  In  other 
words,  the  soul  is  a  creator  of  energy  and  were  it  not  for 
mathematical  problem;  and  it  is  certainly  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
world  that  man  has  in  the  past  three  centuries  succeeded  in  reducing 
countless  problems  to  mathematical  ones  and  has  thus  succeeded 
in  solving  these  problems  in  terms  of  mathematics,  until  to-day 
mathematics  is  the  queen  of  the  sciences. 


148      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

such  creators  of  energy  motion  would  cease.  Moreover, 
what  is  true  of  the  hving  body  is  in  turn  true  of  nature, 
the  universe  about  us  and  above  us,  for  unless  there  is  a 
world-soul  there  would  be  no  source  of  the  world's  motion. 
This  world-soul  may  be  called  the  god  of  Plato. 

10.  Plato's  cosmology. — We  may  now  consider  the 
foundation  of  Plato's  cosmology.  The  ultimate  sources 
of  the  world  are  three:  first,  the  ultimate  chaos,  the  un- 
formed matter,  which  in  Plato's  thought  seems  to  be  equiv- 
alent to  what  we  call  space;  second,  the  forms,  that  is,  the 
fundamental  mathematical  principles  of  science;  third, 
god,  the  world-soul  who  as  the  source  of  motion  makes 
chaos  become  the  cosmos  by  exempHfying  mathematical 
law.  A  possible  illustration  of  this  none  too  clear  doctrine 
is  the  following  imaginary  modern  analogy.  First,  think 
of  the  universal  ether  of  modern  physics,  the  medium  of 
light,  electricity  and  other  energies,  but  think  of  it  as 
absolutely  without  disturbance  or  motion  of  any  kind.  Let 
us  call  this  Plato's  chaos.  In  terms  of  modern  physics 
there  would  then  be  not  only  no  light,  heat  or  electricity 
but  also  no  matter,  no  chemical  elements,  for  matter  is 
electricity,  a  disturbance  in  the  ether.  Second,  think  of 
the  laws  or  doctrines  that  we  may  call  mathematical 
physics.  Let  us  call  these  Plato's  forms.  Third,  think  of 
a  power  that  can  set  up  disturbances  in  the  ether,  an  imag- 
inary substitute  for  Plato's  world-soul.  Now  to  have  the 
world,  the  world  of  light,  electricity  and  matter,  come  into 
being  this  power  has  but  to  set  up  in  the  ether  disturb- 
ances that  are  in  accord  with  the  principles  of  mathe- 
matical physics;  or  put  conversely,  given  the  world  of 
physical  science  we  can  trace  it  back  to  three  sources ;  the 
ether,  the  mathematical  laws  of  physics  and  the  prime- 
mover  who  sets  up  disturbances  in  the  ether  that  exem- 
plify mathematical  physics.^ 

1  In  this  cosmology  also  Plato  is  a  Pythagorean. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    149 

Finally,  we  may  indicate  Plato's  position  in  the  history 
of  theology  by  building  the  following  scale.  The  first 
position,  atheism  or  pantheism,  is  held  by  Democritus 
in  his  doctrine  that  nature  has  no  creator  other  than  itself. 
The  world  is,  in  modern  phrase,  a  perpetual  motion  ma- 
chine. The  second  position  is  held  by  Plato.  A  god  or 
world-soul  is  needed  to  be  the  source  of  motion  in  the 
world.  The  third  position  is  held  by  later  Greek  Platonists 
who  make  God  the  source  not  only  of  the  world's  motion 
but  also  of  the  laws  or  principles  of  science,  that  is,  of  all 
that  is  essential  to  transforming  chaos  into  a  cosmos. 
In  short,  they  identify  God  with  two  of  Plato's  world  prin- 
ciples. The  fourth  position  is  held  in  Christian  theology 
when  God  is  thought  of  as  creating  the  world  out  of  noth- 
ing, when  He  thus  becomes  in  men's  minds  the  only  source 
of  the  world.  In  short,  God  is  here  the  author  of  all  three 
of  Plato's  world  principles. 

For  further  study  read: 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  arts.  Socrates  and  Plato; 
Taylor,  A.  E.,  Plato,  1909; 

Burnet,  History  of  Greek  Philosophy,  105-192,  205-233; 
Bakewell,   Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,   86-103, 

148-216; 
Plato's  Euthyphron,  Apology,  Crito,  Phsedo,  Symposium, 

Protagoras,  Republic,  Thesetetus,  Parmenides,  Sophist 

and  Statesman; 
Taylor,  Aristotle  on  His  Predecessors. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Burnet,  History  of  Greek  Philosophy,  205-350; 

Nettleship,  R.  L.,  Lectures  on  Plato's  Republic,  1901; 

Windelband,  Platon,  3te  Aufl.  1901; 

Pater,  W.,  Plato  and  Platonism,  1893; 

Adam,  J.,  Vitality  of  Platonism,  1911; 

Plato's  Dialogues; 

Dunning,  W.  A.,  History  of  Political  Theories,  Ancient  and 

Medieval,  1902, 1-48. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD! 
ARISTOTLE^ 

1.  Introductory. — To  have  their  names  become  house- 
hold words  has  not  commonly  been  the  lot  of  philoso- 
phers. "Yet  there  are  a  few  philosophers  whose  influence 
on  thought  and  language  has  been  so  extensive  that  no  one 
who  reads  can  be  ignorant  of  their  names,  and  that  every 
man  who  speaks  the  language  of  educated  Europeans  is 
constantly  using  their  vocabulary.  Among  this  few  Aris- 
totle holds  not  the  lowest  place.  We  have  all  heard  of 
him,  as  we  have  all  heard  of  Homer.  He  has  left  his  im- 
press so  firmly  on  theology  that  many  of  the  formulae  of 

1  Bom  384  B.  C.  in  Stagira,  died  322  in  Chalcis  in  EubcEa.  Son 
of  Nicomachus,  court  physician  to  Amyntus  II,  king  of  Macedonia. 
Came  to  Athens  at  the  age  of  eighteen  and  entered  Plato's  Academy 
where  he  remained  for  twenty  years  a  member  of  the  scientific  group 
gathered  around  the  master.  After  Plato's  death  Aristotle  spent 
several  years  in  the  Troad  in  Asia  Minor.  In  343  he  received  the  call 
to  be  tutor  to  the  prince  Alexander,  later  Alexander  the  Great.  In 
335  he  returned  to  Athens  and  founded  a  separate  school  from  the 
Academy.  This  school  has  ever  since  been  called  the  Lyceum  from 
the  building  in  which  it  was  housed;  and  it  has  been  called  also  the 
Peripatetic  school  from  the  fact  that  Aristotle  instructed  in  the 
peripatos  or  covered  portico  of  the  building.  Until  the  death  of 
Alexander  Aristotle  remained  occupied  with  the  management  of  his 
school  in  the  Lyceum.  After  the  death  of  Alexander  a  charge  against 
him  similar  to  that  brought  against  Socrates,  compelled  him  to  flee 
to  Chalcis  where  he  died  the  following  year  at  the  age  of  sixty-two. 

His  published  books  have  almost  entirely  been  lost;  and  with  the 
exception  of  his  essay  on  the  Constitution  of  Athens  only  the  edited 
lecture  notes  of  the  master  have  come  down  to  us. 

150 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    151 

the  Churches  are  unintelligible  without  acquaintance  with 
his  conception  of  the  universe.  If  we  are  interested  in  the 
growth  of  modern  science  we  shall  readily  discover  for 
ourselves  that  some  knowledge  of  Aristotelianism  is  neces- 
sary for  the  understanding  of  Bacon  and  Galilei  and  the 
other  great  anti-Aristotelians  who  created  'the  modern 
scientific'  view  of  Nature.  If  we  turn  to  the  imaginative 
literature  of  the  modern  languages,  Dante  is  a  sealed  book, 
and  many  a  passage  of  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and  Mil- 
ton is  half  unmeaning  to  us  unless  we  are  at  home  in  the 
outlines  of  Aristotle's  philosophy.  And  if  we  turn  to 
ordinary  language,  we  find  that  many  of  the  familiar  turns 
of  modern  speech  cannot  be  fully  understood  without  a 
knowledge  of  the  doctrines  they  were  first  forged  to  ex- 
press. An  Englishman  who  speaks  of  the  '  golden  mean '  or 
of  'liberal  education,'  or  contrasts  the  'matter'  of  a  work 
of  literature  with  its  'form,'  or  the  'essential'  features  of  a 
situation  or  a  scheme  of  policy  with  its  'accidents,'  or  'the- 
ory' with  'practice,'  is  using  words  which  derive  their 
significance  from  the  part  they  play  in  the  vocabulary  of 
Aristotle."  ^ 

2.  The  relation  of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  to  that 
of  Plato  and  Democritus. — A  study  of  Aristotle  reveals 
two  philosophies.  In  the  one  philosophy  Aristotle  is  the 
loyal  follower  and  successor  of  Plato  and  is  an  important 
contributor  to  the  Platonic  tradition.  In  the  other  philos- 
ophy Aristotle  is  a  rebel  rejecting  Platonism.  Judged 
from  a  modern  point  of  view  Aristotle  is  progressive  in 
his  Platonism  and  is  reactionary  in  his  Aristotelianism. 
Judged  from  the  standpoint  of  the  historical  evolution  of 
modern  thought  Aristotle  in  becoming  the  great  teacher 
of  Europe  misled  the  intellectual  enterprise  of  Europe 
for  many  centuries  until  in  the  last  three  centuries  science 
has  rejected  his  leadership  and  has  returned  to  the  philoso- 
1  Taylor,  Aristotle,  p.  7. 


152      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

phy  of  Democritus  and  to  that  of  Plato.  Democritus  was 
modern  in  his  mechanical  atomism  and  in  his  doctrine  of 
representative  perception.  Plato  was  modern  in  giving 
to  mathematics  the  position  of  fundamental  science  and 
in  accepting  those  astronomical  hypotheses  which  were 
leading  directly  toward  the  heliocentric  astronomy.  Aris- 
totle was  not  modern,  but  from  the  modern  point  of  view 
was  reactionary,  in  rejecting  a  mechanical  or  mathematical 
conception  of  the  universe  and  in  offering  mankind  in  its 
place  a  biological,  or  vitalistic  conception;  and  he  was 
reactionary  in  rejecting  the  Pythagorean  astronomy  and 
in  returning  to  the  doctrine  that  the  earth  is  the  motion- 
less center  of  the  universe.  Again,  Aristotle  was  not  mod- 
ern but  reactionary  in  rejecting  the  evolutionary  hypoth- 
esis of  Ionic  science,  the  hypothesis  that  the  universe 
and  the  entire  present  order  of  existent  entities  have 
arisen  out  of  relatively  chaotic  conditions,  and  in  teaching 
instead  of  this  evolutionary  doctrine  the  doctrine  of  the 
eternity  of  the  present  astronomical  world  and  of  the 
present  types  of  earth's  living  and  lifeless  objects. 

Because  ancient  and  medieval  Europe  adopted  Aristote- 
lianism  the  three  hundred  years  from  1600  to  our  own  time 
have  been  an  era  of  struggle  in  which  the  modern  thinker 
has  had  to  outgrow  Aristotle  and  fight  the  Aristotelian 
tradition.  Perhaps  this  fact  will  be  recognized,  if  I  add 
that  the  two  greatest  anti-Aristotelians  in  modern  times 
are  also  two  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  the  history  of 
modern  science,  Galilei  and  Darwin.  Of  course,  in  calling 
Aristotle  a  reactionary  we  must  remember  we  are  parti- 
sans and  not  historians.  As  historians  we  should  add  the 
statement  that  we  were  judging  merely  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  past  three  centuries  of  science.  The  science  of 
future  centuries  may  return  to  Aristotle.  At  least  Aris- 
totelianism  is  still  with  us  and  there  are  to-day  signs  of 
rebellion  against  modern  mechanism.     However,  these 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     153 

are  matters  to  be  discussed  later.  At  present  it  is  enough 
that  we  appreciate  first  the  marvellous  influence  of  Aris- 
totle upon  European  thought  to  modem  times,  as  com- 
pared with  the  influence  of  Plato  and  Democritus,  and 
second  the  return  of  modern  thought  to  the  leadership  of 
these  two  men  whom  Aristotle  in  great  part  supplanted. 

3.  Aristotle  the  Platonist. — We  have  seen  first  that 
the  Socratic  and  Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas  leads  the  phi- 
losopher to  conceive  the  work  of  science  to  be  the  task  of 
defining  and  classifying  the  world's  objects,  and  second 
that  this  doctrine  of  ideas  is  in  part  responsible  for  the 
rapid  advance  in  the  fourth  century  of  the  logic  of  defini- 
tion, of  predication  and  of  classes.  Precisely  how  much 
logic  Aristotle  learned  in  the  Academy  and  how  much  he 
discovered  and  thought  out  independently  we  may  never 
know;  but  in  any  case  Aristotle  gave  the  schools  of  Europe 
their  text-book  in  logic  for  all  the  intervening  time  from  his 
day  to  our  own.^  In  other  words,  Aristotle  gave  to  Europe 
essentially  the  logical  doctrine  of  definition,  of  predication 
and  of  classes  employed  ever  since;  and  he  taught  Europe 
that  to  define  and  classify  are  the  chief  business  of  science,^ 
until  a  new  age  and  a  new  civilization  gave  Europe  other 
masters. 

There  are  other  features  of  the  Aristotelian  logic  be- 
sides the  logic  of  definition  and  classification.  One  that 
must  be  mentioned  is  his  belief  in  the  thoroughly  deductive 
nature  of  scientific  inference,  and  therefore  of  science,  a  doc- 
trine that  is  called  rationalism.  According  to  this  teach- 
ing science  is  not  only  a  deduction  from  some  finite  number 

*  A  few  additions  to  the  Aristotelian  logic  have  of  course  been  made 
in  the  traditional  logic.  Some  of  these  were  made  by  the  Stoic 
logicians  in  the  later  periods  of  Greek  philosophy. 

2  Therefore,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  student  of  European  thought 
to  become  acquainted  with  the  Aristotelian  logic  as  it  is  given  in 
some  one  of  the  numerous  elementary  text-books  of  logic  used  in  the 
schools  of  Europe  and  America. 


154      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  ultimate  premises  but  these  ultimate  premises  are  axio- 
matic, or  intuitively  known  truths.  Thus  there  is  held 
out  to  the  scientist  the  hope  of  making  his  teaching  an 
infallible  and  final  body  of  demonstrated  truth,  instead 
of  the  warning  that,  do  his  best,  his  doctrine  is  but  the 
result  of  an  experimental,  or  trial  and  error  process,  a 
result  which  is  to  be  entertained  only  tentatively  and 
which  he  must  expect  to  see  outgrown  in  the  course  of 
further  research.  Indeed  Aristotle  probably  regarded  his 
own  work  as  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  science. 

Aristotle  was  a  Platonist  also  in  rejecting  the  mechan- 
istic explanation  of  nature  and  in  adopting  the  doctrine 
of  forms.  The  ultimate  stuff  of  which  all  things  are  com- 
posed is  not  capable  of  itself  developing  into  the  cosmos 
and  into  the  organized  objects  we  behold  about  us  as  the 
eastern  atomists  taught;  for  there  must  be  working  in 
nature  besides  the  mechanical  and  the  chance  configura- 
tions of  clouds  of  atoms  genuinely  formative  principles. 
Since  then  matter  can  of  itself  do  nothing  but  can  only 
under  the  influence  of  the  forms  become  a  cosmos;  the 
chief,  if  not  the  only  object  of  scientific  study  is  these 
forms,  or  formative  principles.  In  this  common  doctrine, 
however,  Aristotle  differs  radically  from  Plato,  who  re- 
garded these  forms  as  essentially  mathematical,  by  regard- 
ing them  as  essentially  biological  or  animistic.  In  short, 
Aristotle  was  a  Platonist  who,  because  of  his  interest  in 
biology,  turned  vitalist. 

4.  Aristotle  the  vitalist. — Plato  was  at  heart  a  math- 
ematician, Aristotle  a  biologist.  Therefore  we  must 
understand  Aristotle's  biological  bias  in  order  to  under- 
stand what  is  probably  its  peculiar  consequence,  the  Aris- 
totelian doctrine  of  forms.  To  do  so  let  us  consider  the 
following  commonplace  facts  of  life. 

The  living  entity  is  remarkably  unlike  the  lifeless,  in 
its  origin,  growth  and  reproduction.     The  acorn  is  the 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    155 

offspring  of  the  oak  and  of  nothing  else.  The  acorn  is 
fated  to  grow  into  the  oak  and  into  nothing  else  no  matter 
how  closely  it  may  resemble  other  seeds.  When  the  grow- 
ing acorn  reaches  the  oak  stage,  it  stops  its  transformation 
as  though  this  were  the  goal  it  had  been  seeking  from  the 
beginning;  and  now  as  an  oak  it  produces  other  acorns 
which  also  are  predestined  to  the  same  career  as  that 
through  which  the  parent  oak  has  passed.  What  is  true 
of  the  acorn  is  true  in  general  of  every  living  seed  or  egg 
and  of  every  living  creature  in  its  development  from  the 
seed  or  egg  to  the  mature  form.  Hence  if  in  our  theory  of 
life  we  keep  close  to  life  as  the  layman  observes  it,  we  shall 
have  to  make  somewhat  the  following  statements:  Every 
seed  has  in  it  a  principle  that  determines  its  growth  and 
the  goal  of  that  growth;  every  seed  is  the  offspring  of  a 
parent  that  has  already  reached  this  goal  and  the  parent 
provides  in  the  seed  the  principle  by  which  the  seed  in 
turn  is  predestined  to  the  same  goal  as  that  reached  by  its 
parent;  finally  the  stuff  out  of  which  different  living  crea- 
tures are  composed  shows  no  such  specialization,  for  the 
food  of  one  plant  or  animal  is  shared  in  common  by  many 
other  types  of  plants  and  animals.  In  other  words,  this 
food  is  an  unformed  stuff  which  each  living  creature  as- 
similates and  transforms  into  its  own  tissue  according  to 
the  principle  working  within  the  seed.  For  example, 
acorns  seem  to  absorb  much  the  same  food  as  do  the  chest- 
nuts and  other  similar  trees,  but  the  acorn  transforms  this 
raw  material  into  an  oak  tree  and  the  other  seeds  into 
trees  after  their  kind.  Again  a  kitten  and  a  puppy  both 
drink  milk  but  this  food  is  transformed  by  the  one  into  the 
tissues  of  the  cat  and  by  the  other  into  the  tissues  of  the 
dog.  A  similar  story  awaits  us  as  we  proceed  to  describe 
that  remarkable  feature  of  life  which  we  call  mind.  Minds 
not  only  develop  from  seeds  but  exhibit  the  same  faith- 
fulness to  type.    Again  minds  have  the  same  remarkable 


156      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

capacity  for  predetermining  the  product  of  minds  that  the 
mature  creature  has  in  predetermining  the  character  of 
its  offspring.  For  example,  the  idea  in  the  mind  of  the 
sculptor  predetermines  the  form  of  the  statue,  or  the  idea 
in  the  mind  of  the  craftsman  the  outcome  of  his  handiwork, 
or  finally  the  problem  before  the  mathematician  prede- 
termines the  character  of  the  resulting  thought,  the  solu- 
tion of  his  problem.  Formulated  as  principles  these  facts 
may  be  described  thus :  Every  living  entity  develops  from 
an  unformed  state  by  means  of  a  form  working  within 
it,  and  every  living  entity  is  indebted  for  this  form  to 
a  parent  that  has  already  attained  the  formed  stage. 
Nowhere  do  we  find  crude  matter  capable  of  develop- 
ing without  the  influence  of  such  a  form  into  hving 
creatures.^ 

So  far  we  might  call  Aristotle  merely  a  biologist  of  what 
we  to-day  call  the  vitalistic  school,  but  he  does  not  stop 
there.  What  is  true  of  life  is  true  of  all  nature,  and  these 
principles  of  life  are  universal  philosophical  principles. 
All  motion  or  change  in  the  universe  is  a  transformation, 
an  evolution  under  the  stimulus  of  an  indwelling  form  or 
of  a  form  acting  from  without;  and  this  stimulus  must 
come  from  that  which  has  itself  already  reached  the  formed 
state.  Further,  these  forms  constitute  a  hierarchy,  for 
one  stage  may  be  but  the  raw  material  or  potential  stage 
of  some  yet  higher  stage;  that  is,  life  may  give  life  to  life- 
less matter  but  this  lifeless  matter  is  not  itself  wholly 
unformed,  for  it  may  be  earth  or  water  or  fire,  in  other 
words,  forms  of  matter,  and  again  our  minds  may  trans- 
form what  is  far  from  lacking  all  form,  as  they  do»in  build- 
ing a  temple  out  of  cut  stone. 

^  Though  Aristotle  did  make  the  unfortunate  mistake  that  lower 
forms  of  life  could  develop  out  of,  for  instance,  mud  or  putrefying 
meat  under  the  influence  of  the  sunshine,  as  do  seemingly  frogs  and 
flies. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    157 

These  principles  have  or  suggest  a  number  of  conse- 
quences. First,  the  higher,  or  the  formed  must  be  as  truly- 
ultimate  as  is  matter,  for  matter  cannot  change  without 
the  influence  of  forms.  Second,  every  species  or  type  must 
be  eternal,  for  matter  cannot  evolve  without  the  influence 
of  that  which  is  already  formed;  and  therefore  there  can 
be  no  genetic  evolution  from  less  organized  types  to  more 
organized  types  such  as  biology  to-day  believes  to  have 
taken  place.  In  short,  the  present  order  of  the  universe 
is  eternal.  Third,  there  must  be  one  or  more  highest  forms ; 
and  as  these  can  develop  no  farther,  they  are  pure  forms 
and  not  the  matter,  or  potential  stage  of  some  yet  higher 
type.  Aristotle  decides  that  there  is  but  one  such  highest, 
or  pure  form,  God,  who  is  thus  the  prime  form,  or  mover 
of  the  universe,  the  eternal  source  of  all  stimulation  and 
of  all  resulting  transformation.^  Briefly  put,  nature  would 
stop  without  God's  presence  acting  upon  it.  Fourth, 
there  extends  from  God  to  the  lowest  organized  matter 
a  scale  of  intervening  forms.  Finally,  two  dogmas  of 
Aristotle  should  be  added  to  these  four  consequences. 
Aristotle  believed  that  totally  unformed  matter  is  no- 
where to  be  found  ^  and  he  seemed  to  regard  the  highest 
reason  exhibited  in  man  as  the  highest  type  of  organized 

^  This  is  a  principle  with  consequences  of  great  historical  and 
philosophical  importance  both  in  the  centuries  immediately  following 
Aristotle  and  in  later  centuries.  It  implies  that  the  world  is  not  a 
perpetual  motion  machine.  It  implies  that  nature  depends  directly 
upon  the  supernatural  to  keep  it  transforming.  In  short,  it  flatly 
denies  naturalism,  the  doctrine  of  modem  as  well  as  of  Ionic  science. 
Thus  in  the  history  of  scieuce  this  inference  of  Aristotle  was  a  dis- 
tinctly reactionary  movement,  a  movement  back  toward  primitive 
thought,  and  a  movement  that  led  to  the  greatest  philosophical 
battle  in  all  history,  the  struggle  between  medieval  Aristotelian 
science  and  modern  science. 

2  That  is,  earth,  air,  fire  and  water  cannot  be  analyzed  physically. 
This  dogma  tended  to  impede  the  early  efforts  to  analyze  matter, 
efforts  that  in  time  resulted  in  the  founding  of  chemical  science. 


158      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

matter.  From  the  latter,  it  follows  that  God  is  pure 
thought  or  reason. 

5.  The  Aristotelian  cosmology. — "There  is  no  part  of 
Aristotle's  system  which  has  been  more  carefully  thought 
out  than  his  physics;  at  the  same  time  it  is  almost  wholly 
on  account  of  his  physical  doctrines  that  his  long  ascend- 
ency over  thought  is  so  much  to  be  regretted.  Aristotle's 
qualifications  as  a  man  of  science  have  been  much  over- 
rated. In  one  department,  that  of  descriptive  natural 
history,  he  shows  himself  a  master  of  minute  and  careful 
observation  who  could  obtain  unqualified  praise  from  so 
great  a  naturalist  as  Darwin.  But  in  astronomy  and  phys- 
ics proper  his  inferiority  in  mathematical  thinking  and  his 
dislike  for  mechanical  ways  of  explaining  facts  put  him  at 
a  great  disadvantage,  as  compared  with  Plato  and  Plato's 
Pythagorean  friends.  Thus  his  authority  was  for  centuries 
one  of  the  chief  influences  which  prevented  the  develop- 
ment of  astronomy  on  right  lines.  Plato  had  himself 
both  taught  the  mobility  of  the  earth  and  denied  correctly 
that  the  earth  is  at  the  center  of  the  universe,  and  the 
*  Copernican '  hypothesis  in  astronomy  probably  originated 
in  the  Academy.  Aristotle,  however,  insists  on  the  central 
position  of  the  earth,  and  violently  attacks  Plato  for 
believing  in  its  motion.  It  is  equally  serious  that  he  in- 
sists on  treating  the  so-called  '  four  elements '  as  ultimately 
unanalyzable  forms  of  matter,  though  Plato  had  not  only 
observed  that  so  far  from  being  the  A  B  C  of  nature  they 
do  not  deserve  to  be  called  even  'syllables,'  but  had  also 
definitely  put  forward  the  view  that  it  is  the  geometrical 
structure  of  the  '  corpuscles '  of  body  upon  which  sensible 
qualities  depend.  Aristotle  reverts  to  the  older  theory 
that  the  differences  between  one  'element'  and  another 
are  qualitative  differences  of  a  sensible  kind."  ^ 

The  earth  is  the  motionless  center  of  the  universe. 
^  Taylor,  Aristotle,  pp.  51  f . 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD     159 

About  it  revolve  spheres  that  carry  the  moon,  sun  and 
other  planets  and  the  stars;  and  if  we  assume  these  spheres 
to  be  numerous  enough,  the  seeming  irregularity  in  the 
motions  of  the  planets  and  stars  can  be  explained.  This 
doctrine  of  the  heavenly  spheres  was  of  course  older  than 
Aristotle  but  Aristotle  seems  to  have  been  the  author  of 
the  unfortunate  hypothesis  that  these  spheres  were  ma- 
terial entities  and  not  merely  mathematical  abstractions. 
The  world  above  the  moon  is  essentially  a  changeless 
world,  a  world  more  divine  than  the  world  below  and  quite 
incorruptible;  and  to  make  this  seem  more  consistent 
Aristotle  teaches  that  its  matter  is  different  from  earth, 
air,  fire  and  water  found  here  below  the  moon,  for  the 
spheres  are  made  of  a  fifth  substance.  ^  This  doctrine  of  a 
non-earthly  substance  and  of  the  incorruptibility  of  the 
heavens  seems  distinctly  reactionary  when  compared  with 
the  Ionic  astronomy;  and  it  became  one  of  the  obstacles 
that  the  new  astronomy  had  to  overcome  in  the  time  of 
Gahlei.  It  made  the  world  of  astronomy  a  fundamentally 
different  world  for  physics  to  explain  from  the  world  form- 
ing man's  earthly  environment;  whereas  the  great  tri- 
umphs of  modern  astronomy  have  been  due  to  the  philo- 
sophic hypothesis  that  the  same  physical  science  holds  in 
both  realms  and  hence  that  the  starry  world  is  a  world  of 
change  and  evolution  no  less  than  is  the  world  of  our 
immediate  environment.^ 

Another  historically  important  but  unfortunate  Aris- 
totelian doctrine,^  closely  related  to  the  foregoing  hypothe- 
sis, is  that  the  perfect,  eternal  and  fundamental  form  of 

^  Hence  the  word  "quintessence,"  the  name  of  this  substance. 

2  Immediately  beyond  the  farthest  sphere  is  God,  the  source  of 
all  motion  within  the  world.  Thus  the  supernatural  realm  and  the 
dwelling  place  of  God  are  identified  with  the  physical  heavens  and 
remain  so  identified  until  modem  days.  Of  course,  this  doctrine 
also  was  a  return  to  primitive  thought. 

^  That  again  Galilei  was  long  afterward  to  disprove. 


160      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

motion  is  the  motion  seemingly  exhibited  by  the  heavenly- 
spheres,  namely,  motion  in  a  circle,  whereas  motion  in 
a  straight  line  is  essentially  earthly  and  transitory.  Plato's 
Academy  taught  the  opposite,  and  so  of  course  does  mod- 
ern science,  for  motion  in  a  straight  line  is  according  to 
the  principle  of  inertia  logically  fundamental  to  mechanics 
and  to  motion  in  a  circle  and  uninterfered  with  this  motion 
is  eternal. 

Finally,  one  more  unfortunate  doctrine  of  Aristotle  must 
be  mentioned  because  of  its  historical  importance.  This 
doctrine  has  to  do  with  the  nature  of  space  and  its  limits. 
Aristotle  regards  space  as  a  container  or  vessel  to  be  de- 
fined accordingly  in  terms  of  its  bounds  or  sides.  Thus 
it  follows  from  the  very  definition  of  space  that  space  is 
limited  or  of  finite  extent.  From  this  in  turn  Aristotle 
inferred  that  the  farthest  heavens  are  the  bounds  of  space 
and  so  of  the  universe  in  space,  and  not  only  that  the  uni- 
verse is  finite  but  that  the  earth  is  literally  its  center.  In 
modern  phrase,  not  only  is  the  solar  system  geocentric 
but  so  also  is  the  universe.  No  wonder  that  a  Europe 
brought  up  on  Aristotle  was  shocked  and  even  enraged 
to  be  told  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  that 
the  universe  extended  indefinitely  in  space  and  that  in- 
stead of  the  earth  being  the  center  and  a  quite  important 
part  of  the  world  system  it  is  only  an  infinitesimal  speck 
in  an  infinite  world,  a  world  not  related  to  it  in  any  promi- 
nent way. 

6.  Aristotle's  philosophy  of  life. — While  Aristotle's 
small  interest  in  mathematics  hindered  him  in  astronomy, 
his  great  interest  in  biology  may  have  helped  to  make  him 
the  great  moralist  that  he  was.  In  his  ethical  writings 
there  is  evidence  of  marked  philosophical  progress  beyond 
any  study  of  man's  Hfe  and  its  problems  which  has  come 
down  to  us  from  the  preceding  centuries.  Indeed  so  little 
have  modern  moralists  progressed  beyond  his  "Ethics" 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD    161 

that  this  book  still  seems  to  many  an  excellent  elementary 
text-book.  In  this  respect  it  is  comparable  to  his  logical 
treatises. 

The  element  of  progress  in  Aristotle's  moral  doctrine  that 
perhaps  deserves  most  to  be  mentioned  is  the  discovery 
that  man's  nature  is  fundamental  to  ethical  science.^ 
To  use  the  term  with  which  we  have  now  become  familiar, 
the  business  of  the  moral  and  political  sciences  is  to  dis- 
cover the  highest  "form"  of  humanity,  which  means  a 
form,  or  nature  to  which  untutored  man  is  capable,  or, 
in  Aristotle's  phrase,  to  which  non-moral  man  is  the 
"matter,"  to  which  he  has  "the  potency."  The  ideal  of 
mankind  is  thus  synonymous  with  "man's  true  nature," 
and  his  true  nature  has  to  be  discovered  by  studying  man. 
What  is  the  true  nature  of  man?  Aristotle  replies :  We  see 
it  clearest  in  the  most  intellectual  and  the  most  highly 
socialized  life  of  man.  Differently  expressed,  man  is  by 
nature  intellectual  and  social;  and  therefore  the  ideal 
life  is  the  life  of  the  philosopher,  the  life  of  the  citizen  in  a 
free  city-state  and  the  life  of  friendship.  Of  course, 
modem  students  of  human  nature  find  Aristotle's  list  of 
man's  traits  altogether  too  short  and  modern  moralists 
find  many  details  of  his  teachings  inconsistent  with  our 
democratic  ideals.     From  our  modern  point  of  view  its 

1  In  more  modem  terms,  man's  inborn  endowment  or  instincts 
are  at  the  basis  of  his  moral  life,  for  his  moral  life  has  developed  out 
of  his  pre-moral  or  instinctive  life.  In  this  development,  however, 
the  inborn  nature  has  not  disappeared  but  has  simplj'  been  redirected 
in  some  places,  being  weakened  here  and  strengthened  there.  The 
nature  of  man  still  rules  and  always  will  rule  mankind,  and  it  wiU 
determine  his  moral  judgments  and  be  behind  his  ideals.  Hence 
there  could  be  no  more  absurd  psychology  or  ethics  than  hedonism 
or  any  form  of  the  doctrine  that  man  seeks  pleasure  as  such  or  that 
happiness  as  such  is  the  goal  of  man's  hfe.  Man's  Ufe,  even  his  moral 
life,  is  as  peculiar  to  him  as  is  the  life  of  a  bird  to  the  bird  or  of  the 
cat  to  the  cat.  Therefore  completely  dissociated  from  the  study  of 
the  peculiar  nature  of  man,  moral  science  is  a  mere  war  of  words. 


162      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

greatest  gap  is  its  deliberate  and  typically  Greek  omission 
of  the  practical  life  as  contrasted  with  the  Hfe  of  study, 
of  politics  and  of  leisure.  This  was  an  unfortunate  omis- 
sion, because  in  the  days  to  come  the  contemplative  life 
becomes  exaggerated  into  the  only  ideal  life  of  man  and 
easily  becomes  not  scientific  but  religious  and  ecstatic 
contemplation,  the  meditation  of  the  mystical  philosopher 
and  of  the  monastic  saint. 

Man's  nature  is  complex  and  as  a  result  man  can  rarely 
satisfy  all  of  his  tendencies  to  respond  to  some  given  situa- 
tion. His  members  war  with  one  another;  and  therefore 
a  large  part  of  moral  science  is  concerned  with  reconciling 
these  contestants.  Aristotle's  solution  of  this  war  of 
man's  members  is  the  famous  doctrine  of  the  golden  mean. 
Reason  must  enter  into  the  struggle  between  the  rival 
tendencies  of  man's  nature  and  direct  his  blind  impulses 
and  appetites.  Reason  can  reconcile  them  by  showing 
the  virtues,  the  golden  means.  For  instance,  it  reveals 
courage  the  mean  between  foolhardiness  and  cowardice, 
liberality  the  mean  between  avarice  and  extravagance, 
and  modesty  the  mean  between  bashfulness  and  shame- 
lessness.  "  This  mean  is  not  the  same  for  every  individual 
and  in  all  circumstances,  it  is  'relative  to  ourselves,'  and 
it  is  'determined  by  reason,  or  as  a  right-minded  man 
would  determine  it.'  It  is  not,  however,  a  matter  of  sub- 
jective opinion  or  arbitrary  choice:"  ^  It  is  a  matter  of 
moral  insight  and  man  has  to  develop  in  himself  such  in- 
sight or  conscience.  Finally,  to  make  man  moral,  as 
opposed  to  allowing  him  to  remain  instinctive,  is  not  to 
give,  as  some  seem  to  think,  moral  instruction  merely 
but  to  build  in  man  by  long  and  constant  practice  those 
habits  which  constitute  what  we  call  character.  In  short, 
moral  education  aims  at  two  things,  conscience  and 
character. 

1  Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  90. 


GREAT  THINKERS  OF  THE  ATHENIAN  PERIOD       163 

For  further  study  read: 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  Aristotle  (The  People's  Books); 

Wallace,  E.,  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Aristotle; 

Welldon,  J.  E.  C,  Nicomachean  Ethics,  1906; 

Chase,  D.  P.,  Nicomachean  Ethics; 

Bakewell,  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,  217-268; 

Johnson,  E.  H.,  Argument  of  Aristotle's  Metaphysics,  1906; 

Taylor,  Aristotle  on  his  Predecessors. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Zeller,  E.,  (transl.  Costelloe  and  Muirhead)  Aristotle  and  the 
earlier  Peripatetics,  1897; 

Jones,  T.  E.,  Aristotle's    Researches  in  Natural  Science, 
1912; 

Aristotle's  Politics  (transl.  by  Welldon  and  also  by  Jowett) ; 

Dunning,  W.  A.,  History  of  Political  Theories,  1902,  49-98. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   HELLENISTIC   AND   ROMAN   PERIODS 

1.  Introductory.! — gy  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great 
a  new  Greece  had  come  into  being,  a  spiritually  decadent 
Greece.  Signs  of  its  coming  date  back  at  least  to  the  be- 
ginning of  the  fourth  century,  when  political  vigor  and 
solidarity  are  waning  in  the  Greek  city-states,  when  Greek 
art  and  literature  are  losing  their  classic  purity  and  beauty, 
and  when  men  are  becoming  more  seriously  engaged  in 
making  their  peace  with  the  great  hidden  powers  behind 
nature  by  means  of  magic  and  hypnotic  suggestion  than 
in  understanding  and  controlling  the  world  through  science 
and  skill.  The  most  civilized  part  of  the  world  was  losing 
its  nerve.  This  loss  of  nerve,  apparent  in  the  year  330  B. 
C.,  becomes  greater  and  greater  in  succeeding  centuries; 
until  it  reaches  its  maximum  in  the  western  Mediterranean 
world  in  the  days  preceding  Charles  the  Great  and  in  the 
eastern  world  in  the  days  when  the  Arab  supplants  the 
Greco-Roman. 

Such  an  era  of  decadence  lasting  a  thousand  years  was 
extremely  complex.  It  was  complex  because  man  and 
society  are  complex  and  because  the  Greek  and  Roman 
empires  included  many  peoples  and  cultures  and  were 
therefore  themselves  extraordinarily  complex.  Now  in  a 
complex  entity  one  part  may  be  changing  while  another 
is  constant  or  one  part  may  be  changing  more  rapidly 

1  In  the  first  and  second  sections  of  this  chapter  I  am  indebted 
to  Gilbert  Murray's  brilliant  book,  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion, 
Lectures  III  and  IV. 

164 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS        165 

than  another  or  again  one  part  may  be  improving  while 
another  is  degenerating.  All  of  these  characteristics  of  a 
changing  complex  entity  were  present  in  the  intellectual, 
artistic,  religious,  social  and  political  life  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean world  during  these  one  thousand  years.  In  some 
respects  we  may  call  the  Augustan  age  the  greatest  epoch 
in  the  history  of  Mediterranean  civilization;  for  it  was  a 
time  of  universal  peace,  a  time  of  widest  intercourse  and 
closest  affiliation  between  all  the  peoples  of  the  ancient 
world,  and  a  time  of  greatest  prosperity:  but  in  other 
respects  it  was  far  inferior  to  the  Greek  city-states  of  the 
sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.  C;  for  by  this  time  that 
spiritual  excellence  which  had  made  Greece  the  light  of 
the  world  had  become  a  tradition,  a  memory  rather  than 
a  living  and  energizing  present  experience.  With  this 
spiritual  and  in  particular  with  this  intellectual  decadence 
we  are  directly  concerned. 

What  is  spiritual  decadence?  Spiritual  decadence  in- 
cludes not  only  the  slowing  down  and  stopping  of  spiritual 
progress  away  from  primitive  thought  but  also  the  coming 
back  or  the  spreading  to  wider  circles  of  society  of  primi- 
tive customs  and  beliefs.  It  involves  a  loss  of  intellectual 
self-confidence  and  ambition,  a  loss  of  the  habits  of  research 
and  verification,  an  increase  of  blind  belief  and  obedience, 
and  an  increase  of  suggestibility  and  hysteria.  It  involves 
also  a  similar  moral  loss,  a  loss  of  the  ambition,  self-confi- 
dence and  hopefulness  of  the  pioneer,  a  loss  of  the  sturdy 
independence  and  vigilance  of  the  free  citizen  and  a  loss 
of  self-restraint  and  social  co-operation  and  efficiency. 
If  these  are  the  underlying  psychological  factors  in  spirit- 
ual decadence  we  may  expect  the  following  to  be  the 
phenomena  of  decadence.  The  mob  mind  and  its  govern- 
ment are  more  in  evidence  in  politics  and  in  religion.  An 
uncritical  acceptance  of  tradition  characterizes  religion, 
art  and  science.    The  rehgion  of  the  folk  becomes  increas- 


166      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ingly  a  practice  of  magic  and  hypnosis  and  returns  to 
animism,  myth  and  hero-worship.  Science  becomes 
scholastic,  that  is,  it  changes  from  research  to  mere  argu- 
mentation. The  strong  arm  of  the  despot  and  miUtary 
leader  alone  can  bring  order  into  the  troubled  political 
world.  The  political  adventurer  wins  by  becoming  the 
favorite  of  tyrants  and  not  by  service  to  the  state  and  the 
people.  On  the  one  hand,  luxury  increases  in  the  sense 
that  men  make  its  enjoyment  an  almost  bestial  neglect  of 
all  other  occupation  and  interests.  On  the  other  hand, 
those  who  seek  the  better  life  are  obliged  to  go  to  the 
opposite  extreme,  to  renounce  luxury  altogether,  to  be- 
come puritans  and  ascetics.  Virtue  becomes  less  leading 
an  active  and  useful  life  as  a  member  of  the  family,  of  the 
circle  of  friends  and  of  the  state,  and  becomes  more  a  mere 
state  of  mind.  The  world  becomes  less  a  place  that  re- 
wards virtue,  skill,  diligence  and  intelligence.  Instead 
it  becomes  a  place  that  seems  governed  by  the  god  Chance 
or  Fortune  rather  than  by  the  god  Righteousness.  In 
such  a  world  the  wise  man  withdraws  and  seeks  to  make 
himself  independent  of  fortune.  He  seeks  those  treasures 
which  the  world  cannot  take  away;  he  sets  his  heart  on  a 
world  beyond  the  evil  and  confusion  of  earth ;  and  he  finds 
at  last  his  peace  in  God,  a  peace  that  passes  human  under- 
standing. Such  was  the  period  that  we  have  now  to  study. 
What  were  the  causes  of  this  decadence?  This  is  a 
question  for  the  student  of  general  history  to  answer 
rather  than  one  for  the  student  of  philosophy.  No  doubt 
the  former  would  call  our  attention  to  such  underlying 
causes  as  the  political  and  economic  conditions  of  the  time 
and  he  might  mention  further  such  yet  deeper  causes 
as  the  decHning  birth  rate,  the  growth  of  cities,  the  increase 
of  slavery,  the  concentration  of  wealth,  the  increase  of 
the  proletariat,  and  the  killing  off  through  war  of  the  best 
strains  in  the  population.    Whatever  the  causes,  the  free 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS        167 

Greek  city-state  is  disappearing  and  Greek  imperialism 
is  taking  its  place.  The  Greek  world  soon  embraces  the 
old  empire  of  Persia  and  Egypt,  and  becomes  ruled  by 
military  despots  and  their  successors,  who  vary  from  a 
hero  "to  a  vulgar  sot  or  a  corrupt  adventurer."  Greek 
culture  spreads  over  the  many  principalities  but  Oriental 
culture  also  makes  inroads  into  Greece ;  and  thus  a  cosmo- 
politanism partly  Greek  and  partly  Oriental  is  to  be  found 
in  the  great  cities.  Following  Greek  imperialism  comes 
that  of  Rome.  Now  Greek  and  Oriental  cosmopolitanism 
travels  farther  west  and  Mediterranean  civilization  be- 
comes a  vast  political  unit  made  up  of  many  peoples  and 
many  cultures.  Among  them  are  Persians  and  Syrians, 
and  Jews,  Egyptians  and  Phoenicians,  Greeks  and  Italians, 
and  Celts.  How  vastly  different  the  social  and  political 
life  of  the  Roman  Empire  from  that  of  Athens  in  the  days 
of  Pericles !  Still,  Greece  had  the  highest  culture  to  offer 
the  Empire  and  the  Empire  took  what  she  was  capable  of 
absorbing  and  this  was  no  small  amount. 

2.  Religion. — Three  aspects  of  the  intellectual  life  of 
the  Hellenistic-Roman  period  belong  especially  within  the 
scope  of  this  book — the  religious,  the  philosophical  and 
the  scientific.    Let  us  first  consider  the  religious  aspect. 

The  religious  aspect  has  been  admirably  described  by 
Professor  Murray  in  the  following  words:  "Any  one  who 
turns  from  the  great  writers  of  classical  Athens,  say  Soph- 
ocles or  Aristotle,  to  those  of  the  Christian  era  must  be 
conscious  of  a  great  difference  in  tone.  There  is  a  change 
in  the  whole  relation  of  the  writer  to  the  world  about  him. 
The  new  quality  is  not  specifically  Christian :  it  is  just  as 
marked  in  the  Gnostics  and  Mithras-worshippers  as  in  the 
Gospels  and  the  Apocalypse,  in  Julian  and  Plotinus  as  in 
Gregory  and  Jerome.  It  is  hard  to  describe.  It  is  a  rise 
of  asceticism,  of  mysticism,  in  a  sense,  of  pessimism;  a 
loss  of  self-confidence,  of  hope  in  this  life  and  of  faith 


168      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

in  normal  human  effort;  a  despair  of  patient  inquiry,  a 
cry  for  infallible  revelation ;  an  indifference  to  the  welfare 
of  the  state,  a  conversion  of  the  soul  to  God.  It  is  an  at- 
mosphere in  which  the  aim  of  the  good  man  is  not  so  much 
to  live  justly,  to  help  the  society  to  which  he  belongs  and 
enjoy  the  esteem  of  his  fellow  creatures;  but  rather,  by 
means  of  a  burning  faith,  by  contempt  for  the  world  and 
its  standards,  by  ecstasy,  suffering  and  martyrdom,  to 
be  granted  pardon  for  his  unspeakable  unworthiness,  his 
immeasurable  sins.  There  is  an  intensifying  of  certain 
spiritual  emotions;  an  increase  of  sensitiveness,  a  failure 
of  nerve. 

"Now  this  antithesis  is  often  exaggerated  by  the  ad- 
mirers of  one  side  or  the  other.  A  hundred  people  write 
as  if  Sophocles  had  no  mysticism  and  practically  speaking 
no  conscience.  Half  a  dozen  retort  as  if  St.  Paul  had  no 
public  spirit  and  no  common  sense.  I  have  protested  often 
against  this  exaggeration;  but,  stated  reasonably,  as  a 
change  of  proportion  and  not  a  creation  of  new  hearts,  the 
antithesis  is  certainly  based  on  fact."  ^ 

The  traditional  religion  was  by  the  time  of  Plato  bank- 
rupt. It  failed  in  two  tests.  First,  the  myths,  such  as  the 
tales  found  in  Homer  and  Hesiod,  could  no  longer  be 
believed  by  any  enlightened  man  and  to  such  men  as 
Plato  they  were  even  blasphemous.  Moreover,  not  only 
were  they  incredible  as  stories  but  the  conception  of  the 
gods  they  presupposed  was  too  primitive  and  even  savage 
for  men  who  had  reached  a  far  nobler  insight  into  the 
nature  of  the  ultimate  godhead.  And  the  savage  ritual 
had  become  repulsive.  Second,  the  traditional  religion 
failed  to  satisfy  "men's  ethical  requirements  and  aspira- 
tions." Here  "it  was  if  anything  weaker  than  elsewhere. 
Now  a  religious  belief  that  is  scientifically  preposterous 
may  still  have  a  long  and  comfortable  life  before  it.  Any 
1  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  p.  303  f. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS        169 

worshipper  can  suspend  the  scientific  part  of  his  mind 
while  worshipping.  But  a  rehgious  belief  that  is  morally 
contemptible  is  in  serious  danger,  because  when  the  re- 
ligious emotions  surge  up  the  moral  emotions  are  not  far 
away.    And  the  clash  cannot  be  hidden." 

One  consequence  of  the  loss  of  the  traditional  religion, 
especially  the  Olympic,  was  that  the  world  seemed  no 
longer  governed  by  gods  who  punished  injustice  and  wick- 
edness and  who  could  be  influenced  by  the  motives  and 
purposes  of  men.  Rather  the  world  seemed  governed  by 
Chance  or  Fortune.  This  is  the  goddess  and  "happy  is 
the  man  who  knows  how  to  placate  Fortune  and  make  her 
smile  upon  him!"  A  sentence  from  Pliny  makes  the  prin- 
ciple clear.  "Throughout  the  whole  world,  at  every  place 
and  hour,  by  every  voice  Fortune  alone  is  invoked  and  her 
name  spoken:  she  is  the  one  defendant,  the  one  culprit, 
the  one  thought  in  men's  minds,  the  one  object  of  praise, 
the  one  cause.  She  is  worshipped  with  insults,  counted  as 
fickle  and  often  as  blind,  wandering,  inconsistent,  elusive, 
changeful,  and  friend  of  the  unworthy.  .  .  .  We  are  so 
much  at  the  mercy  of  chance  that  Chance  is  our  god."  ^ 
Evidently,  this  is  the  doctrine  that  human  effort  does  not 
count.  It  is  the  natural  response  to  a  world  filled  with 
great  catastrophes  and  changes,  a  world  in  which  military 
leaders  were  making  superhuman  conquests  not  in  the 
name  of  their  gods  but  in  a  spirit  of  hospitality  to  all  the 
religions  that  crossed  their  paths.  There  is  little  difference 
between  this  belief  in  chance  and  the  belief  in  fatahsm. 
Still  the  doctrine  that  all  is  due  to  Fate  or  Destiny  can  be 
the  nobler  and  indeed  becomes  most  noble  in  the  teachings 
of  the  Stoic  philosophers  that  the  divine  Destiny  or  Provi- 
dence rules  in  all  things. 

Two  other  important  aspects  of  the  new  religion  were 
the  deification  of  the  heavens  and  the  deification  of  man.> 
1  Quoted  by  Murray,  p.  114. 


170      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Even  by  the  older  philosophers  and  especially  by  Plato 
the  sun,  moon  and  stars  were  already  spoken  of  as  divine. 
Now  when  the  Oriental  influence  has  become  direct  and 
welcome,  the  cults  of  the  heavenly  bodies  and  the  wander- 
ing stars  become  popular  indeed;  and  many  ways  to  strange 
magic  are  open.  Of  these  ways  the  one  open  to  astrology 
must  be  especially  mentioned.  One  ancient  author  tells 
us:  "Other  nations  despise  the  philosophy  of  Greece.  It 
is  so  recent  and  so  constantly  changing.  They  have  tradi- 
tions which  come  from  vast  antiquity  and  never  change. 
Notably  the  Chaldeans  have  collected  observations  of 
the  stars  through  long  ages,  and  teach  how  every  event  in 
the  heavens  has  its  meaning,  as  part  of  the  eternal  scheme 
of  divine  forethought.  .  .  .  By  the  risings  and  settings 
of  the  stars  and  by  the  colors  they  assume,  the  Chaldeans 
predict  great  winds  and  storms  and  waves  of  excessive 
heat,  comets  and  earthquakes,  and  in  general  all  changes 
fraught  with  weal  or  woe  not  only  to  nations  and  regions  of 
the  world,  but  to  kings  and  to  ordinary  men  and  women."  ^ 
In  this  religion  of  the  stars  the  world  below  the  moon 
and  the  planets  is  markedly  distinguished  from  the  world 
of  the  fixed  stars.  Here  below  is  the  world  ruled  by  Fate 
and  Chance  and  evil  demons  but  beyond  these  changeable 
stars  is  the  home  of  the  ultimate  God,  the  land  of  freedom 
and  bliss.  There  above  is  our  true  home,  for  our  souls  are 
sparks  of  divine  life,  effluences  of  the  stars.  Thither  we 
shall  return  after  death;  ''but  in  the  meantime?  In  the 
meantime  there  are  initiations,  sacraments,  mystic  ways 
of  communion  with  God.  To  see  God  face  to  face  is,  to  the 
ordinary  unprepared  man,  sheer  death.  But  to  see  Him 
after  due  purification,  to  be  led  to  Him  along  the  true 
Way  by  an  initiating  Priest,  is  the  ultimate  blessing  of 
human  life.    It  is  to  die  and  be  born  again."  ^ 

*  Quoted  by  Murray,  p.  124. 
2  Murray,  p.  128. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS       171 

This  brings  us  at  once  to  another  characteristic  and  re- 
lated doctrine,  that  of  a  mediator  between  God  and  man. 
There  is  the  priest  but  behind  the  priest  there  is  some 
greater  teacher  in  the  land  from  which  he  has  come  and 
behind  the  latter  there  is  some  still  greater  master  ever 
more  remote,  from  whom  the  magic  rites  and  the  revela- 
tion originally  came.  But  beyond  all  is  "the  one  eternal 
Divine  mediator,  who  being  in  perfection  both  man  and 
God  can  alone  fully  reveal  God  to  man,  and  lead  man's 
soul  up  the  heavenly  path  to  its  ultimate  peace.  This 
mediator  descends  from  God  through  the  heavenly  spheres. 
There  is  associated  with  him  the  ancient  behef  in  the  dying 
and  suffering  god.  When  his  work  is  done  he  ascends  to 
Heaven  to  sit  by  the  side  of  the  Father  in  glory."  However, 
besides  the  mediator  there  is  a  direct  way  by  which  the 
heavenly  vision  is  given  to  men,  to  men  of  especial  piety 
and  prophetic  power.  This  way  is  the  trance  and  ecstasy 
of  the  saint,  involving  sometimes  the  temporary  departure 
of  the  soul  from  the  body  and  its  union  with  God. 

Besides  the  deification  of  the  world  of  the  heavens  is  the 
deification  of  man.  From  time  immemorial  all  of  these 
peoples  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean  world  had  been 
accustomed  to  the  conception  of  the  God-man.  In  the 
olden  time  the  heroes  and  the  kings  had  been  divine;  still 
if  they  were  divine,  were  they  any  greater  than  these 
conquerors  and  emperors  whose  mere  word  seemed  suffi- 
cient to  bring  the  superhuman  to  pass?  Are  these  men 
not  members  of  that  hierarchy  of  lesser  gods  by  which  the 
will  of  the  ultimate  God  and  His  providential  care  for  man 
are  made  manifest  in  the  happenings  of  this  lower  world? 

But  to  the  nobler  religious  men  of  these  days  not  the 
worldly  powerful  deserves  most  to  be  deified  for  all  men 
are  sons  of  God  and  have  come  from  God,  and  the  divine 
manifests  itself  in  man  not  by  the  deeds  of  the  mighty  but 
by  the  helping  of  om-  fellow  man  and  by  the  life  of  the 


172      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

spirit.  To  which  statement  may  be  added,  as  an  instance 
of  the  intense  moral  enthusiasm  of  these  days,  the  noble 
ending  of  a  document  that  may  be  called  a  swan  song 
of  ancient  paganism.  "Souls  that  have  lived  in  virtue  are 
in  general  happy,  and  when  separated  from  the  irrational 
part  of  their  nature,  and  made  clean  from  all  matter,  have 
communion  with  the  gods  and  join  them  in  the  governing 
of  the  whole  world.  Yet  even  if  none  of  this  happiness 
fell  to  their  lot,  virtue  itself,  and  the  joy  and  glory  of  virtue, 
and  the  life  that  is  subject  to  no  grief  and  no  master  are 
enough  to  make  happy  those  who  have  set  themselves  to 
live  according  to  virtue  and  have  achieved  it."  ^ 

Finally,  there  is  to  be  mentioned  as  a  characteristic 
trait  of  the  religion  of  this  period,  a  tendency  related  to 
astrology  and  in  part  a  consequence  of  the  disbelief  in  the 
older  yet  sacred  myths.  I  refer  to  the  practice  of  allegori- 
cal interpretation,  which  completely  reconciles  the  sacred 
character  of  the  myths,  ritual  and  magic  with  their  seem- 
ing absurdity  and  savagery.  The  ancient  myths  and 
customs  are  not  to  be  taken  literally  but  to  be  interpreted 
spiritually.  God  talks  to  man  in  allegories  and  the  spirit- 
ually minded  alone  can  hear  the  true  message.  But  what 
are  the  limits  of  such  divine  allegories?  Evidently  there 
is  none,  for  this  interest  in  and  approval  of  allegorical 
interpretation  opens  a  way  that  leads  directly  to  the  most 
fanciful  and  absurd  hypotheses  that  mysticism  may  sug- 
gest. The  ancient  savage  myths  are  filled  with  noble 
truth,  the  sacred  writings  of  old  are  full  of  hidden  meaning 
and  require  a  mass  of  commentary  to  bring  this  meaning 
to  the  reader.  Even  the  world  about  us  and  our  life  within 
it  are  but  allegories.  All  is  allegory;  and  if  we  might  only 
see  with  the  eyes  of  faith  and  behold  the  world  from  the 
heavenly  point  of  view  all  would  be  clear.    The  true  world 

1  Sallustius,  On  the  Gods  and  the  World  (translated  and  pub- 
lished by  Murray  in  his  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Rehgion,  p.  214). 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS       173 

is  above  the  moon,  this  world  is  but  a  delusion  to  the  sinner 
and  an  allegory  to  the  saint.  Such  was  a  belief  of  thought- 
ful men  in  Hellenistic  and  Roman  days  and  such,  we  shall 
see,  remained  the  belief  of  Europe  throughout  the  middle 
ages. 

Of  course  all  of  these  many  doctrines,  as  held  and  put 
into  practice  by  the  people  of  the  Greco-Roman  world, 
varied  from  primitive  superstition  and  savage  magic  on 
the  one  hand  to  the  noblest  and  most  spiritual  mysticism 
on  the  other  hand.  The  complete  story  is  almost  infinitely 
complex  and  I  have  given  only  its  barest  outlines.  Such 
in  essence  was  the  religion  of  these  many  centuries,  be- 
coming more  markedly  primitive  as  science  and  philosophy 
became  more  and  more  decadent.  Such  was  the  religious 
atmosphere  into  which  Christianity  entered.  Such  indeed 
remained  in  principle  the  religious  atmosphere  of  Mediter- 
ranean and  western  Europe  even  to  modern  days. 

For  further  study  read: 

Murray,  G.,  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  1912,  103-214. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Wendland,  P.,  Hellenistisch-romische  Kultur,  1907; 

Cumont,  F.  V.  M.,  Oriental  Religions  in  Roman  Paganism, 
1911. 
(For  a  short  and  select  bibliography  cf.  Murray,  Four  Stages  of 

Greek  Religion,  p.  153  f.) 

3.  Philosophy. — From  the  beginning  Greek  philosophy 
had  never  been  thoroughly  secular,  rather  it  had  been 
"  a  way  of  hfe,"  a  religion.  This  religious  character  of 
philosophy  had  been  especially  prominent  in  the  western 
tradition  in  its  two  chief  branches,  the  Pythagorean  and 
the  Eleatic;  but  in  the  Athenian  period,  in  Sicily,  in  Athens 
and  in  Abdera,  among  both  Pythagorean  and  eastern 
atomists,  astronomers  and  mathematicians  there  had  been 
signs  of  research  becoming  purely  scientific.     And  this 


174      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tendency  toward  pure  secularism  was  not,  as  we  shall  see, 
without  its  effect  in  the  following  period.  Still,  the  most 
powerful  influences  at  work  in  the  philosophy  of  the  Athe- 
nian period  and  even  in  Athens  itself  were  semi-religious 
and  ethical.  Socrates,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  in  addition 
to  then*  distinctly  secular  or  scientific  interests,  had  a 
marked  Pythagorean  interest  in  the  welfare  and  destiny 
of  the  soul.  They  showed  also  a  marked  religious  interest, 
over  and  above  their  distinct^  scientific  interest,  in  the 
world  of  the  stars ;  for  the  world  of  the  fixed  stars  seemed 
nearer  God  even  to  Plato  who,  as  we  have  seen,  all  but  en- 
tertained the  hypothesis  that  contradicts  the  very  central 
thought  of  the  Orphic-Pythagorean  religion,  the  astronomy 
that  we  moderns  know  as  Copernican. 

In  the  Hellenistic  and  Roman  periods  the  tendencies  to 
secularize  science  gradually  become  weaker  and  finally 
die;  whereas  the  religious  and  ethical  tendencies  encroach 
more  and  more  upon  the  scientific  until  philosophy  be- 
comes a  purely  religious  philosophy,  or  theology.  These 
tendencies  are  already  prominent  before  the  end  of  the 
fourth  century.  The  philosophers,  or  intellectual  leaders 
are  ceasing  to  be  men  of  research,  investigators,  or  un- 
prejudiced enquirers  after  truth,  and  are  becoming  proph- 
ets, preachers  and  "guides  to  the  better  fife."  They 
come  not  to  argue  but  to  convinse,  not  to  enquire  but  to 
persuade,  not  as  seekers  after  truth  but  as  those  speaking 
with  authority.  The  voice  is  no  longer  the  voice  of  the 
Greek  philosopher  of  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  but  the 
voice  of  the  Semitic  prophet  whose  message  begins  "Thus 
saith  the  Lord."  And  remarkable  to  add,  many  of  the 
most  prominent  of  these  philosophers  of  life  were  not 
Greeks,  though  they  taught  in  Athens,  but  Semites.  Greek 
philosophy  is  passing,  precisely  because  Greece  herself  is 
passing;  for  another  world,  a  bigger  world  is  coming  into 
being,  a  world  of  which  Greece  is  only  a  part.  So  too,  the 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS       175 

unique  prominence  of  Athens  is  passing,  for  other  rich  and 
cultured  cities  are  now  becoming  metropolitan  seats  of 
learning.  Among  these  Alexandria  is  the  most  famous. 
Here  meet  men  of  all  the  Mediterranean  countries  and  of 
the  countries  farther  East.  Here  Persian,  Semite,  Egyp- 
tian, Greek  and  later  Roman  are  all  at  home.  Th^ir 
language  may  be  Greek  but  their  thought,  their  beliefs  and 
their  custonis  are  of  many  lands. 

However,  the  prophet-philosopher  is  not  merely  a 
prophet.  He  is  also  a  philosopher.  It  is  true,  he  has  a  mes- 
sage to  give  mankind  and  he  delivers  this  message  not  as 
the  outcome  of  research  or  as  something  requiring  to  be 
verified;  still  if  you  hear  his  voice  and  obey  his  call,  he 
will  offer  you  proof  afterward.  Then  too,  there  are  rival 
voices;  and  he  must  combat  these  voices  and  in  turn  make 
his  own  message  impregnable  against  their  attacks.  Now, 
proof  and  argumentative  attack  and  defence  require  a 
philosophy,  an  array  of  fundamental  premises.  And  to 
secure  this  philosophical  foundation  the  prophet-philoso- 
pher goes  back  to  the  philosophical  teachings  of  the  sixth 
and  fifth  centuries;  but  what  he  selects  depends  upon  his 
controversial,  pedagogical  and  apologetic  needs  rather 
than  upon  an  open-minded  scrutiny.  In  short,  philosophy 
remains  a  chief  subject  of  study  and  of  writing  during  these 
periods  and  indeed  for  seventeen  hundred  years;  but  it 
becomes  a  philosophy  that  is  traditional  and  apologetic, 
and  it  remains  such  until  a  new  civihzation  is  born  and  the 
genuine  spirit  of  curiosity  and  research  again  inspires  the 
intellect  of  man.  In  saying  this  we  must  not  undervalue 
these  periods  and  the  many  centuries  that  follow ;  for  these 
seventeen  centuries  are  important  philosophically.  True, 
the  philosophical  changes  are  few  and  take  place  slowly. 
None  the  less  these  centuries  mark  the  passing  of  the  old 
civilization  and  the  birth  of  the  new;  they  form  the  bridge 
between  the  two  great  ages;  and  they  have  left  in  our 


176      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

modern  intellects  vestiges  of  themselves  which  promise 
to  remain  there  as  long  as  European  culture  itself  en- 
dures. 

The  philosophical  tendencies  of  the  Hellenistic  and  Ro- 
man periods  have  two  other  characteristics  in  common. 
The  first  of  these  two  characteristics  is  the  appeal  "to 
universal  belief,"  or  the  consensus  gentium.  This  tendency 
was  not  new;  but  it  now  becomes  dominant  and  explicit. 
Even  throughout  the  preceding  periods  the  philosopher 
rested  his  case  upon  its  logical  consistency  and  the  intel- 
lectual satisfaction  it  afforded  rather  than  upon  objective 
and  experimental  verification.  That  is  to  say,  there  was  a 
marked  subjective  strain  running  through  all  Greek 
thought.  This  trait  now  comes  prominently  to  view  in  the 
dominating  conviction  that  the  belief  of  all  mankind  and 
the  belief  of  great  antiquity  are  an  ultimate  authority  or 
proof.  What  has  been  beUeved  semper,  uhique,  et  ab 
omnibus  is  as  such  true.  Of  course  this  appeal  to  universal 
belief,  to  the  consensus  gentium,  was  really  but  an  appeal  to 
the  beliefs  of  the  age,  to  the  beliefs  that  were  spreading 
throughout  the  Mediterranean  world  or  to  the  beliefs  of 
extreme  antiquity,  which  had  in  previous  centuries  spread 
throughout  that  world.  In  any  case,  it  was  not  what  the 
philosopher  of  that  time  thought  it,  as  we  can  see  who 
judge  of  it  from  a  distance  and  as  he  could  not  for  he  lived 
amid  men  who  knew  no  other  culture.  He  thought  it 
man's  innate  and  infallible  reason  speaking,  he  thought  it 
God  in  man  and  through  man  pronouncing  the  eternal 
verities.  We  know  it  to  be  the  peculiar  product  of  the 
remarkable  religious,  social,  political  and  economic  en- 
vironment of  the  Mediterranean  world  and  the  neighbor- 
ing Orient. 

The  second  remaining  characteristic  common  to  the 
philosophical  tendencies  of  the  Hellenistic  and  Roman 
periods  is  still  to  be  mentioned.    The  major  problem  of 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS        177 

the  wise  man  is  to  free  himself  from  destiny,  from  the  for- 
tunes and  misfortunes  of  this  world  beneath  the  moon. 
Of  course,  this  trait  was  simply  part  of  the  general  reli- 
gious tendency  of  the  age  which  we  have  already  studied. 
The  wise  man,  or  later  the  holy  man,  differs  markedly 
from  the  fool  and  the  sinner;  for  he  is  independent  of 
fortune.  He  has  renounced  the  wicked  world  and  its 
pomps  and  vanities.  His  mind  and  heart  are  set  on  the 
goods  that  no  man  can  take  from  him  or  on  the  world  that 
passeth  not  away.  Thus,  the  philosopher  and  the 
ascetic  hermit  become  species  of  the  same  genus.  There  is 
the  common  aim,  to  be  free  from  the  world  that  the  ordi- 
nary man  values  so  highly,  the  world  that  cannot  satisfy, 
the  world  that  is  but  vanity,  and  finally  to  be  free  from  all 
the  sinful  lusts  of  the  flesh.  Briefly  put,  no  matter  how 
philosopher  may  differ  from  philosopher  and  quarrel  with 
philosopher,  one  and  all  appeal  to  the  universal  beliefs  of 
mankind  and  one  and  all  seek  to  free  mankind  from  chance 
or  fortune  and  from  the  world  and  the  flesh. 

4.  Scientific  progress. — The  general  drift  of  the  in- 
tellectual life  of  the  Hellenistic  and  Roman  periods  was 
more  and  more  nearly  limited  to  the  religious  current. 
None  the  less,  it  would  be  an  error  to  assume  that  the  spe- 
cial sciences  died  with  Aristotle  or  even  ceased  to  progress 
immediately  after  his  time.  On  the  contrary,  all  the 
sciences  of  the  fourth  century  continued  to  progress  during 
the  third  and  reached  their  highest  mark  in  this  century. 
But  by  the  year  200  B.  C.  the  progressive  spirit  indispen- 
sable for  scientific  research  was  steadily  declining;  and  as 
the  centuries  passed  science  became  more  and  more  a 
tradition,  more  and  more  a  mere  study  of  the  scientists 
of  former  days.  Yet  even  such  study  to  be  critical  or 
thorough  requires  scientific  acumen  and  learning  and  these 
too  were  passing  away;  for  by  the  end  of  the  Roman  period 
the  scholar  could  at  the  best  compile  inferior  elementary 


178      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

text-books  out  of  the  older  material  with  little,  if  any, 
critical  insight  or  scientific  self-confidence. 

For  further  study  read: 

Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization,  627-656. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Heiberg,  J.  L.,  Naturwissenschaft  und  Mathematik  im  klas- 

sischen  Altertum,   1912; 
Dannemann,   F.,  Die  Naturwissenschaften  in  ilirer  Ent- 

wicklung,  1910; 
Gerland  und  Traumiiller,  Geschichte   der   physikalischen 
Experimentierkunst,   1899. 

(a)  In  geography. — For  one  science  especially  the 
Hellenistic  and  Roman  periods  were  highly  favorable, 
that  is,  for  the  growth  of  geographical  knowledge.  The 
conquests  of  Alexander  carried  his  soldiers  into  India  and 
central  Asia  and  made  possible  a  more  extensive  and  more 
nearly  accurate  knowledge  of  the  eastern  world  as  far  as 
western  India  and  central  Asia;  and  some  information 
even  regarding  China  was  available  for  the  later  geogra- 
phers. At  the  same  time  that  this  wider  knowledge  of  the 
Eastern  world  was  acquiring,  a  remarkable  expedition 
under  the  leadership  of  Pytheas  of  Massilia  explored  the 
western  coast  of  Europe,  the  coast  of  the  British  Isles  and 
the  coast  south  of  the  German  Sea.  With  the  expansion 
of  the  Roman  Empire  the  amount  of  such  information 
regarding  both  the  East  and  the  West  increased,  so  that 
by  150  A.  D.,  the  known  world  included  also  Central  Eu- 
rope, the  British  Isles,  Southern  Russia,  a  considerable 
stretch  on  the  eastern  and  western  coasts  of  Africa  and  the 
sources  of  the  Nile.  However,  the  most  significant  prog- 
ress was  the  endeavor  to  ascertain  the  size  of  the  earth, 
whose  spherical  shape  was  now  fully  accepted  by  geogra- 
phers, and  to  ascertain  the  latitude  and  longitude  of  the 
different  important  centers,  so  that  world-maps  of  some 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS        179 

accuracy  might  be  constructed.  The  height  of  this  geo- 
graphical progress  was  reached  in  the  famous  map  con- 
structed by  Ptolemy  about  150  A.  D.  In  addition  to  this 
interest  in  mathematical  geography  there  was  marked 
interest  in  physical  geography,  shown  especially  in  the 
study  of  the  tides  on  the  Atlantic  coast  and  in  the  study  of 
volcanoes  and  other  mountains  and  of  the  changes  taking 
place  on  the  earth's  surface.  Finally,  a  far  more  extensive 
knowledge  of  the  peoples  of  the  known  world  and  of  their 
customs  was  acquiring  through  the  reports  of  soldiers  and 
travellers.  Thus  geographical  information  reached  its 
maximum  by  the  end  of  the  second  century  after  Christ; 
and  from  that  time  men  depended  more  and  more  upon 
what  earlier  students  of  geography  had  written,  and  their 
interest  and  knowledge  kept  decreasing.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Tozer,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  98-370; 
Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization,  635-639. 

(b)  In  astronomy. — The  mathematical  research  in 
astronomy  from  Plato  to  Ptolemy  was  of  the  highest 
importance,  especially  the  work  done  in  the  third  century 

1  The  men  that  deserve  especially  to  be  remembered  because 
of  their  contribution  to  geographical  knowledge  or  because  of  their 
compilation  of  earlier  writings  on  geography  are:  Pytheas  of  Mas- 
silia,  fi.  c.  330  B.  C;  Dicsearchus  of  Sicily,  fl.  c.  320  B.  C;  Eratos- 
thenes of  Gyrene,  fl.  c.  240  B.  C.  (for  his  measurement  of  the  earth); 
Hipparchus  of  the  island  of  Rhodes,  fl.  c.  140  B.  C.  (for  his  investi- 
gations of  the  parallels  of  latitude  and  meridians  of  longitude); 
Posidonius  of  Syria,  fl.  c.  100  B.  C.  (for  his  travels  and  descriptive 
geography);  Polybius  of  Megalopolis  in  Arcadia,  fl.  c.  170  B.  C. 
(for  his  descriptive  and  historical  geography);  Strabo,  fl.  c.  20  B.  C. 
(the  great  geographer  of  the  Augustan  age  who  sums  up  the  existing 
geographical  knowledge) ;  Pliny,  fl.  c.  60  A.  D.  (for  his  compilation  of 
the  knowledge  contained  in  the  writings  of  earlier  authors);  and 
finally  Ptolemy  (and  his  immediate  predecessor  Marinus  Tyrius  to 
whom  he  is  greatly  indebted)  of  Alexandria,  fl.  c.  150  A.  D. 


180      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

B.  C.  One  of  the  tragedies  of  history  is  that  the  helio- 
centric hypothesis  was  explicitly  entertained  by  one  small 
group  of  astronomers  in  this  century  ^  only  to  be  rejected 
by  the  majority  who  followed  Aristotle.  However,  the 
work  of  both  groups  raised  mathematical  astronomy  from 
a  speculative  to  a  definitely  scientific  stage.  Summed  up 
in  briefest  outline,  this  progress  in  mathematical  astron- 
omy included  the  calculation  of  the  size  of  the  earth,  the 
distances  of  the  sun  and  moon,  the  location  of  eclipses  in 
the  heavens  and  the  more  nearly  accurate  calculation  of 
their  times  of  occurrence.  It  included  the  further  dis- 
covery of  irregularities  in  the  paths  of  the  sun,  moon  and 
planets  and  the  attempt  to  account  for  them  by  circles, 
circles  whose  centers  lay  on  the  circumference  of  other 
circles  (epicycles)  and  by  eccentricities.  Finally,  it  in- 
cluded the  discovery  of  the  refraction  of  light  by  the 
earth's  atmosphere  and,  in  general,  an  enlargement  and 
an  increase  in  the  accuracy  of  such  information  as  that 
which  belongs  in  an  astronomical  almanac.^ 

For  further  stvdy  read: 

Berry,  Short  History  of  Astronomy,  34-75; 
Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization,  639-641. 

'  The  most  important  name  in  this  smaller  group  is  Aristarchus 
of  Samos,  fl.  c.  270  B.  C. 

2  Besides  Aristarchus  the  astronomers  that  deserve  especially  to 
be  remembered  for  their  contributions  to  astronomy  in  these  periods 
are:  Eratosthenes  (already  mentioned  for  his  estimate  of  the  size 
of  the  earth);  Hipparchus  of  Rhodes,  fl.  c.  140  B.  C.  (the  greatest 
mathematical  astronomer  of  the  ancient  world);  and,  after  almost 
three  hundred  years  of  little  if  any  progress,  Ptolemy  of  Alexandria, 
fl.  c.  150  A.  D.  "His  reputation  rests  chiefly  on  his  great  astronomical 
treatise,  known  as  the  Almagest,  which  is  the  source  from  which  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  our  knowledge  of  Greek  astronomy  is  derived, 
and  which  may  be  fairly  regarded  as  the  astronomical  Bible  of  the 
middle  ages."  The  history  of  Greek  astronomy  practically  ceases 
with  Ptolemy. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS       181 

For  more  extensive  studxj  read: 

Heath,  T.  L.,  Aristarchus  of  Samos,  1-350. 

(c)  In  mathematics. — Mathematics  also  made  great 
progress  during  the  Hellenistic  period,  especially  during 
the  third  century  B.  C;  for  this  was  the  century  of  the 
three  most  famous  mathematicians  of  the  ancient  world, 
Euclid,  Archimedes  and  Apollonius.  This  progress  was 
centered  in  the  work  of  the  school  of  Alexandria  at  which 
most  mathematicians  either  studied  or  taught.  The  school 
of  Alexandria  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  Academy  at 
Athens  as  it  in  turn  was  a  descendant  of  the  school  of 
Pythagoras.  To  sum  up  the  numerous  details  of  mathe- 
matical history  during  these  centuries  in  a  few  sentences 
is  difficult;  but  the  important  facts  for  the  student  of  phi- 
losophy to  note  are  these.  The  third  century  before  Christ 
saw  elementary  geometry,  conies  and  arithmetic  reach  the 
stage  where  further  progress  was  virtually  impossible 
until  new  methods  were  discovered ;  but  these  new  methods 
were  not  to  be  discovered  until  eighteen  hundred  years 
later  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  Besides 
geometry,  conies  and  arithmetic  the  beginnings  of  mechan- 
ics were  made  by  Archimedes.  Moreover,  it  is  important 
to  note  that  Archimedes'  method  of  study  laid  those 
foundations  of  geometry  which  rest  on  measurements  and 
on  exhaustions  and  was  therefore  the  beginning  of  those 
discoveries  which,  again  in  the  seventeenth  century,  led 
to  the  discovery  of  the  calculus.  To  the  mathematics  of 
the  third  century  later  mathematicians  added  the  be- 
ginnings of  trigonometry  and  algebra.  The  names  es- 
pecially associated  with  the  former  are  Hipparchus  and 
Ptolemy  and  with  the  latter  Diaphantus  of  Perga,  that  is 
to  say,  with  men  who  excepting  Hipparchus  lived  in  the 
second  and  third  centuries  after  Christ.  Finally,  it  is 
to  be  noted  that  Rome  did  not  contribute  to  either  astron- 


182      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

omy  or  to  mathematics.  Her  part  in  the  history  of  these 
sciences  was  to  transmit  a  few  quite  elementary  text-books 
to  the  schools  of  the  middle  ages.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Ball,  Short  Account  of  the  History  of  Mathematics,  31-109; 

Cajori,  History  of  Mathematics,  29-83; 

Gow,  History  of  Greek  Mathematics,  192-315. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Cantor,  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Geschichte  der  Mathematik. 

(d)  In  medicine. — Finally,  we  must  consider  briefly 
the  medical  progress  in  these  periods ;  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
one  of  the  important  factors  in  enabling  man  to  outgrow 
primitive  thought  and  custom  and  to  become  rational  in 
his  response  to  the  world  about  him  is  the  growth  of  knowl- 
edge regarding  the  structure  and  working  of  his  body  and 
regarding  the  causes  and  the  cure  of  disease.  The  early 
Hellenistic  period  was  also  the  time  when  medical  science 
reached  its  highest  point  of  development  in  the  ancient 
world  and  the  school  in  which  this  happened  was  also  the 
school  of  Alexandria.  There  human  anatomical  research 
was  permitted  and  encouraged,  possibly  because  of  the 
Egyptian  custom  of  embalming  the  dead  and  partly  be- 
cause of  vivisection  permitted  upon  criminals  condemned 
to  death.  But  in  the  early  stages  of  medicine  anatomy 
without  physiology  is  not  especially  helpful  except  to  sur- 
gery; and  this  explains  why  surgery  flourished  especially 

1  The  names  of  mathematicians  belonging  to  this  great  period  in 
the  history  of  mathematics  that  deserve  especially  to  be  made 
familiar  are  the  following :  Euclid,  fl.  c.  290  B.C.;  Archimedes  of  Syra- 
cuse, fl.  c.  250  B.  C;  Apollonius  of  Perga,^.  c.  220  B.  C;  Hipparchus 
of  Rhodes,  the  great  astronomer,  fl.  c.  120  B.  C;  Ptolemy  of  Alex- 
andria, the  great  geographer  and  astronomer,^,  c.  150  A.  D.;  Pappus 
of  Alexandria,  a  geometrician  of  eminence,  fl.  c.  300  A.  D.;  and  Dio- 
phantus  of  Alexandria,  probably  fl.  c.  250  A.  D. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  AND  ROMAN  PERIODS       183 

in  these  days.  Medicine  had  to  progress  by  an  empirical 
study  of  the  history  and  symptoms  and  by  the  experi- 
mental treatment  of  disease;  and  there  did  arise  in  Alex- 
andria an  "Empiric  "  school  of  physicians  which  followed 
the  best  part  of  the  Hippocratic  tradition  and  which  raised 
Greek  medicine  to  its  highest  stage.  In  short,  these  cen- 
turies of  the  early  Alexandrian  school  saw  Greek  medical 
science  reach  in  surgery,  obstetrics  and  the  nursing  of  the 
sick  a  stage  comparable  with  modern  medicine  in  those 
respects  where  modern  medicine  does  not  depend  upon  the 
enormous  growth  of  physiological  science  and  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  causes  of  disease. 

None  the  less,  the  period  of  progress  was  short  here  as 
elsewhere.  Soon  came  the  days  when  medical  science 
became  either  a  mere  tradition  or  a  mere  speculation. 
Rome  was  no  more  constituted  to  progress  beyond  Greece 
in  medicine  than  she  was  in  mathematics  and  astronomy. 
Hence  her  part  was  to  learn  what  Greek  teachers  had  to 
give  and  to  hand  on  in  her  text-books  what  she  had  ac- 
quired.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Botsford  and  Sihler,  Hellenic  Civilization,  631-635. 

1  The  most  noted  names  in  the  history  of  medicine  belonging 
to  these  periods  are  the  following:  Herophilus  of  Alexandria,  fl.  c. 
300  B.  C;  his  contemporary  Erasistratus  of  Alexandria,  and  the 
founder  of  the  empiric  school  (possibly  PhiUnus  of  Cos,  a  pupil  of 
Herophilus).  Noted  names  in  Roman  medicine  are  Celsus,  probably 
fl.  c.  1  A.  D.  and  Galen,  fl.  c.  170  A.  D.  The  former  was  a  mere 
compiler  of  information  and  is  important  chiefly  because  of  the 
wide  study  of  his  works  in  the  early  days  of  modern  medicine.  The 
latter  also  was  a  compiler  and  systematizer,  but  he  was  in  addition 
an  ardent  though  hardly  successful  man  of  research.  His  importance 
is  again  due  to  his  writings  which  in  later  days  became  the  highly 
valued  text-books  of  the  Arabian  physicians  and  through  them  of 
European  physicians  till  the  days  when  the  ancient  medicine  was 
supplanted  by  the  results  of  modern  research. 


184      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Far  more  extensive  study  read: 

Puschmann,  T.,  History  of  Medical  Instruction,  1891; 
Sprengel-Rosenbaum,  Geschichte  der  Medizin; 
Neuberger,  M.,  Geschichte  der  Medizin,  1906-08; 
Schwalbe,  E.,  Vorlesungen  liber  die  Geschichte  der  Medizin, 
1909. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE    PHILOSOPHICAL   SCHOOLS 

1.  Introductory. — Within  the  thousand  years  from 
300  B.  C.  to  700  A.  D.  arose  many  philosophical  parties 
or  schools  differing  one  from  another  in  numerous  ways  in 
spite  of  the  common  tendencies  that  made  them  all  legit- 
imate offspring  of  the  age.  C  In  the  earlier  centuries  these 
differences  between  the  rival  philosophical  tendencies  are 
marked,  but  they  become  less  evident  as  the  general 
decadence  proceeds  and  by  the  middle  of  the  period  have 
in  large  measure  disappeared.)  Moreover,  in  the  earlier 
centuries  the  schools  of  the  golden  age  yet  lingered  on,  for 
the  Pythagoreans,  the  Socratics,  the  Platonists,  the  Aris- 
totelians, the  lonians  and  the  Eleatics  were  still  distin- 
guishable; but  already  these  older  schools  were  becoming 
more  and  more  united  by  a  common  composite  philosophy 
that  may  be  called  eclectic.  In  addition  to  these  philo- 
sophical parties  surviving  from  the  preceding  period  there 
arose  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  century  three  new  and 
distinct  philosophical  schools,  the  Epicurean,  the  Stoic 
and  the  Skeptic.  But  in  a  few  centuries  these  new  schools 
also  tend  to  merge  into  the  same  composite  philosophy  of 
the  age  and  by  the  end  of  the  early  Roman  Empire  have 
quite  disappeared  as  distinct  parties.  Thus  as  the  cen- 
turies go  by  th^philosophical  thought  of  the  Mediterranean 
world  becomes  more  and  more  uniform,  it  becomes  es- 
sentially religious,  and  it  is  best  exemplified  in  the  two 
great  religioiis  philosophies,  the  Neoplatonic  and  the_Chris- 
tiaji.    In  this  chapter  we^all  study  the  two  most  promi- 

185 


lit  >r?  ^  >;  -  /or  B.^  -   /^r  ^  >  /). 

186      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

nent  schools  arising  in  the  Hellenistic  period,  the  Epi- 
curean and  the  Stoic,  and  the  school  that  is  peculiarly  their 
successor  in  the  Roman  period,  the  Neoplatonic,  leaving 
for  the  two  following  chapters  respectively  the  study  of 
Rome's  great  contribution  to  European  thought,  the 
Roman  law,  and  the  study  of  the  Christian  philosophy, 

2.  The  philosophical  schools  of  the  Hellenistic  and 
Roman  periods. — The  schools  of  the  Hellenistic  period 
were  founded  by  their  masters  explicitly  to  meet  a  moral 
and  religious  need  and  therefore  they  may  be  called  phil- 
osophical churches,  not  churches,  however,  for  the  masses, 
since  the  masses  do  not  get  their  religion  and  philosophy 
from  the  great  thinkers  but  from  the  general  social  environ- 
ment and  from  the  popular  preachers.  Rather  these  schools 
represented  the  intellectual  aristocracy  and  were  fitted  for 
the  moral  and  religious  needs  only  of  extraordinary 
men. 

The  Epicurean  school  aimed  to  free  man  from  supersti- 
tion and  to  teach  man  how  to  live  in  a  world  in  which  he 
has  nothing  to  fear  either  before  or  after  death.  Since, 
according  to  Epicurus,  man  lives  in  a  world  of  atoms 
governed  only  by  mechanical  laws  and  since  such  a  world 
is  neither  moral  nor  immoral,  neither  divine  nor  diabolical; 
man  has  nothing  to  fear  but  man  and  nothing  for  which 
to  hope  except  what  man  through  his  own  free  will  and 
efforts  is  able  to  accomplish.  If  man  will  be  thoroughly 
hard-headed  and  will  seek  the  pleasures  that  endure,  that 
are  really  worth  while,  and  that  are  obtainable  in  every 
station  of  life;  then  man  may  live  happily  and  die  fear- 
lessly. In  contrast,  the  Stoic  school  aimed  to  make  man 
believe  in  a  divinely  governed  world,  a  world  on  which  he 
might  rest  his  hopes  and  to  which  he  might  completely 
entrust  his  life  and  its  well-being.  Nature  is  divine  and 
the  heavenly  Father  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being  rules  all  by  His  providence.     All  that  happens 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  187 

is  of  God,  all  came  from  God  and  will  return  to  God. 
Therefore  whether  we  live  or  die,  whether  we  thrive  or 
suffer,  whether  our  lot  is  what  the  world  calls  easy  or  hard, 
we  are  God's  and  His  will  is  working  in  us  and  is  determin- 
ing all  for  our  good.  Our  part  is  but  to  believe  in  God  and 
to  hve  according  to  this  belief.  Our  part  is  but  to  learn  to 
desire  that  God's  will  be  fulfilled  in  us,  and  to  desire  only 
what  God  desires.  The  Skeptic  solved  hfe's  problem  still 
differently.  The  wisest  thing  for  man  to  learn  is  that  he 
can  know  nothing,  that  science  is  impossible  and  that  the 
world  is  therefore  an  insolvable  problem.  If  man  learns 
this  he  will  base  no  hopes  on  the  world  and  he  will  base  no 
fears  on  the  world.  Rather  he  will  harden  himself  to 
extreme  indifference.  Hope  not,  fear  not,  says  the  Skeptic, 
but  so  direct  your  life  that  you  cannot  lose  and  cannot 
have  your  peace  of  mind  disturbed,  your  hopes  unrealized 
or  your  happiness  destroyed.    In  short,  be  indifferent. 

Evidently  such  philosophies  of  life  are  only  for  the  in- 
tellectually gifted  and  the  self -directed.  They  betoken 
the  existence  still  of  intellectualism  and  individualism,  and 
the  existence  still  of  the  fight  against  the  superstitions  of 
the  masses.  But  they  bear  also  the  marks  of  decadence 
and  the  loss  of  nerve;  for  they  are  evidently  counsels  of 
defence  against  the  world.  Their  optimism  is  intended  to 
inhibit  or  suppress  a  deeper  pessimism.  In  their  struggle 
against  the  popular  religion  and  its  prehistoric  tendencies 
the  Epicurean  was  most  uncompromising  and  the  Stoic 
least;  but  neither  could  win  mankind,  for  neither  really 
had  anything  to  offer  mankind  that  could  bring  back  the 
old  enthusiasm.  That  is  to  say,  they  fought  superstition 
but  this  left  their  philosophvmerelv  negative;  and  they 
defended  man_ag«iT^srflrwnrldjjf  jwgTch^he  reallv  despj,ired 
but  this  too  left  their  philosophy  merely  negative.  Now  a_ 
neg^iveT)eIiercaMot_win  tha.worIcl ;  for  to  win  the  world 
one  musTneeds^teach  what  to  love,  what  to  hope,  what  to 


188      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

do.  Even  savage  hopes  and  loves  and  deeds  are  more 
stimulating  and  effective  than  the  negative  commands  of 
the  enlightened.  Indeed,  this  truth  is  exemplified  by  these 
philosophical  schools  themselves;  for  they  slowly  died 
away  or  were  gradually  transformed  into  distinctly  re- 
ligious philosophies,  approaching  closer  and  closer  the 
popular  religion. 

By  the  Christian  era  philosophy  had  become  distinctly 
religious  and  the  story  of  its  further  development  is  closely 
related  to  the  history  of  the  religions  within  the  Roman 
Empire.  This  story  is  highly  complicated,  for  each  re- 
ligious sect  and  movement  had  its  theologians,  teachers, 
or  wise  men ;  and  as  it  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this  book 
to  give  more  than  a  general  view  of  this  remarkable  period 
in  Europe's  intellectual  history,  let  us  single  out  the  two 
most  important  and  enduring  philosophical  movements, 
the  philosophy  called  Neoplatonism  and  the  Christian 
Philosophy.  The  two  were  closely  related  and  the  latter 
was  much  indebted  to  the  former. 

Neoplatonisiyu  arose  at  Alexandria  in  the  third  century 
after  Christ  out  of  earher  philosophical  tendencies  which 
date  back  three  hundred  years  at  least.  TWs_ghilosophical 
school  is  of  especial  interest  to  the  student  ofpHnosophy; 
foflfniarks  The  bankruptcy  of  Greek  science,  by  revealing 
the  Greek  thinker  no  longer  fnterested  in  ehapirical  and 
rational  science  but  devoted  to  religion  exclusively.  The 
Neoplatonist  distinguished  three  grades  of  wisdom,  that 
which  is  empirically  known,  that  whicFTs  known  by  the 
reason,  ahdthat  which  is^su^eij-rational,  qt  super-scientific. 
Long*  before  him  Socrates  and  Plato  had  distinguished 
sharply  between  the  world  of  perception  and  the  world  of 
science;  and  they  had  hinted  at  a  yet  higher  emotional  or 
ecstatic  vision  of  the  good,  the  true  and  the  beautiful, 
the  ultimate  source  of  the  forms.  But  they  did  not  sur- 
render as  the  object  of  their  chief  interest  the  two  lower 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  189 

worlds.  This  the  Neoplatonist  does,  finding  in  God  alone 
the  true  interest  of  the  human  mind.  In  distinguishing 
sharply  between  matter  and  form  the  Neoplatonist  goes 
back  also  to  kjocrates,  rlato  and  Aristotle.  God  is  the 
source  oi  all  torm,  tiiat  is  of  all  order  and  structure  in  the 
world;  and,  if  we  mean  by  a  thing  any  object  that  has 
structure  or  character,  then  all  things  owe  their  existence 
ultimately  to  God.  Above  a,ll  other  things  our  souls jpwe  (*y 
their  being  to  God  coming  ultimately  from  Him;  and  tkey  ii-wL,*^?^ 
Iintil  they  are  reunited  with  God,  for  the  world       r^"^^-*^ 


are  restless  until  thfey" 

of  sense  and  reason'^nnot  satisfy  them  and  therefore 
cannot  be  the  true  object  of  theii-  interest.  Finally,  God 
cannot  be  the  object  of  our  study  in  the  way  in  which  we 
study  the  material  objects  about  us  or  in  the  way  we  study 
the  objects  of  geometry.  God  is  beyond  science  and  there- 
fore those  who  would  see  God  or  be  reunited  with  Him 
must  go  beyond  reason.  But  what  is  beyond  reason? 
The  Neoplatonists  and  the  mystics  of  all  ages  have  found 
this  highest  state  of  contemplation  in  the  ecstatic  vision, 
that  is,  in  the  trance  produced  by  auto-suggestion. 

The  last  great  school  of  Mediterranean  thinkers  was 
composed  of  the  fathers  of  the  church  from  St.  Paul  to 
St.  Augustine  who  gave  the  orthodox  or  catholic  Chris- 
tianity her  theology.  Whence  was  Christianity  to  derive 
her  philosophy?  The  answer  is  twofold.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  Jews  had  no  philosophy  of  their  own  upon  which  Chris- 
tianity could  depend;  but  on  the  other  hand,  the  Greeks 
had,  and  they  alone  had.  In  fact,  the  Jews  before  Christ 
had  begun  to  absorb  Greek  thought,  especially  the  Jews  in 
Alexandria,  that  center  of  philosophy  and  meeting  place  of 
religions;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  byJJisjbime  of  Christ  Greek 
philosophv  had  become  the  common  possession  of  tTie 
Mediterranean  world,  had  become  genuinely  the  Mediter- 
ranean plnlosophv.  Thus  this  Mediterranean  philosophy 
had  to  form  tEe'intellectual  environment  of  the  Christian 


190       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

from  the  days  of  Paul  of  Tarsus^  to  the  days  of  Augustine, 
the  converted  student  of  Neoplatonism,  and  until  there 
ceased  to  be  any  philosophical  environment  outside  the 
Christian  Church.  In  this  Mediterranean  environment 
the  Christianity  of  the  apostolic  age  changed  both  reli- 
giously and  philosophically  until  by  the  fifth  and  sixth 
centuries  it  had  become  as  truly  the  product  of  Mediter- 
ranean culture  as  it  had  begun  the  religion  of  Jesus' 
disciples  gathered  in  Jerusalem.  In  short,  the  historian 
bidsusthink  of  historic  Christianity  as  generically  Medi- 
terranean and'bniy  in  some  respects^  specifically  Judean. 
Indeed,  it  is  only  because  the  Church  included  the"  folk 
religion  of  the  Mediterranean  peoples  that  she  survived 
the  Dark  Ages  and  has  ever  since  controlled  the  religion 
of  the  southern  and  central  European  peasant.  Hence 
ifwejneaji  by  Christianity  what  the  historian  does",  the 
actual  religion  of  "Europe  from  these..days  we  are  studying 
to  our  own,  Christianity  is  far  older  in  many  of  its  ele- 
ments TKan  eyeF^istoric  Judaism.  Fn  part,  it  Is  as  old 
"even  as  the  Mediterranean  culture  itself.  Its  philosophy 
in  the  broadest  sense  is  therefore  Mediterranean.  How- 
ever, we  are  now  considering  especially  the  philojophy^f 
the  great  Christian  thinkexs.  The  source  of  this  philoso- 
phy  IS  twofold : fargytftegeneral  thought^rthejjiteUec^^ 
Mediterranean  world  ancf  jNeoplatomim;  and_  second, 
the  Roman  law!  'ihat  i^o  say,  the  Christian  thinker  in 
philosophizing  Christianity  drew  upon  the  legal  concepts 
of  the  Greco-Roman  and  upon  the  concepts  of  the  current 
philosophies.  He  drew  in  particular  upon  the  Mediter- 
ranean conception  of  God,  of  the  divine  Mediator,  of  the 
world,  of  man's  place  in  the  world  and  of  his  relation  to 
God  and  of  God's  relation  to  the  world,  of  man's  destiny 

'  Tarsus  was  a  city  of  distinctly  Hellenistic  culture  and  a  strong- 
hold of  Stoic  philosophy  with  which  St.  Paul  was  undoubtedly 
familiar. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  191 

and  of  the  ideal  life,  and  finally  of  the  way  in  which  the 
soul  came  to  be  separated  from  God  and  of  the  means  by 
which  the  soul  can  make  its  return  to  God.  Christian 
theology  was,  of  course,  as  were  all  the  philosophies  of 
the  Roman  period,  a  religious  philosophy;  and  like  the 
other  philosophies  of  that  period  it  added  nothing  to  the 
sum  of  Greek  science  and  contributed  no  radically  new 
concepts,  or  principles  to  Greek  philosophy.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Paulsen,  F.  (Thilly  transl.).  System  of  Ethics,  1899,  33-64. 

^The  names  of  prominent  thinkers  of  these  several  centuries 
from  the  time  of  Aristotle  to  the  days  of  Neoplatonism  are  too 
numerous  to  be  given  in  our  outline.  They  can  be  found  in  the 
more  detailed  histories  of  philosophy.  The  Academy  and  the  Ly- 
ceum long  continued  to  number  able  men  among  their  members. 
Among  the  Epicureans  the  most  prominent  names  are:  Epicurus, 
fl.  c.  300  B.  C;  and  that  of  the  Roman  poet,  Lucretius,  fl.  e.  60  B.  C. 
Of  the  Stoics,  the  most  prominent  names  are:  Zeno,  fl.  c.  300  B.  C; 
Chrysippus,  fl.  c.  290  B.  C;  the  Roman,  Pana^tius,  fl.  c.  140  B.  C; 
and  in  the  days  of  the  Empire,  Seneca,  fl.  c.  40  A.  D.;  Epietetus,  a 
contemporary  of  Seneca;  and  the  emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius,  fl.  c. 
160.  Of  the  skeptics,  the  most  prominent  names  are:  Pyrrho,  fl.  c. 
325  B.  C;  Arcesilaus,  of  the  Academy,^,  c.  275;  Carneades,  also  of 
the  Academy,  fl.  c.  175  B.  C;  ^nesidemus,  fl.  c.  1  A.  D.;  and  Sextus 
Empiricus,  fl.  c.  190  A.  D.  Of  the  so-called  Eclectics,  the  following 
names  are  especially  prominent:  Posidonius,^.  c.  100  B.  C;  the  great 
Roman  writer  and  statesman  Cicero,  fl.  c.  60  B.  C. ;  and  Plutarch,  fl.  c. 
100  A.  D.  There  should  be  mentioned  also  the  Jewish  philosopher 
of  Alexandria,  a  religious  Platonist,  Philo,  fl.  c.  10  A.  D.  Of  the 
Neoplatonists  the  most  prominent  names  are:  Plotinus,  ^.  c.  250  A. 
D.;  and  Porphyry,^,  c.  275. 

The  transfer  of  Greek  culture  to  Rome  began  with  the  conquest 
and  annexation  of  the  Greek  cities  of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily  in 
the  third  century  B.  C.  Cato  the  Censor,  fl.  c.  190  B.  C,  protests 
in  vain  against  the  introduction  and  influence  of  Greek  culture  and 
thought.  By  the  time  of  Lucretius  and  Cicero,  the  Roman  thinker 
has  become  as  truly  a  Greek  thinker  as  was  any  of  his  contempora- 
ries. Among  all  Roman  writers  Cicero  stands  first  for  translating 
Greek  thought  into  Latin. 


192      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

3.  The  Epicurean  school. — In  the  remainder  of  this 
chapter  we  shall  study  briefly  the  Epicurean,  the  Stoic 
and  the  Neoplatonic  philosophies,  leaving  the  study  of 
Christian  philosophy  for  a  later  chapter.  Let  us  begin 
with  the  school  founded  by  Epicurus  ^  in  Athens  about 
300  B.  C. 

Of  all  the  Hellenistic  schools  the  Epicurean  had  Ihe 
least  interest  in  science_tliough  it  waged  the  keenest  waj 
IiT'tact,  it  was  not  a  scientitic~so- 


Ey  but  a  church.  All  Greek  philosophical  schools  had 
been  religious  societies  but  they  had  been  also  schools  of 
research;  whereas  this  new  school  frankly  renounced  the 
scientific  interest,  for,  according  to  the  Epicurean,  the 
only  value  of  science  is  the  practical  value  of  freeing  man 
from  superstition  and  showing  man  what  to  live  for. 
We  may  think  of  Epicurus  as  saying:  "So  far  of  course 
be  scientific  but  no  farther.  Away  with  mathematics, 
astronomy  and  the  rest  as  mere  foolishness!"  How 
different  was  the  interest  of  the  school  as  an  ethical  and 
religious  society!  As  such  it  resembled  in  several  respects 
the  early  Christian  communities  and  was  often  associated 
with  Christianity  by  its  enemies.  Like  Christianity  it 
bitterly  opposed  the  folk  religion  and  was  accordingly 
numbered  with  the  atheists  and  even  persecuted.  Like 
Christianity  the  Epicurean  societv  was  a  sort  of  fraternity. 
Its  poorj,Dd_sick  were  cared  for,  it  had  its  love  teast,  and 
its  members  wei'e  closely  bound  to  one  another_b^_broth- 
erly  affection.  ' 

As  a  church  the  Epicurean  society  offered  the  world  a 

^  Epicurus  was  born  in  Samos  of  Athenian  ancestry  in  341  B.  C. 
He  removed  to  Athens  in  306  and  died  in  270  B.  C.  He  was  the 
founder  of  this  school  but  it  is  doubtful  if  his  teachings  were  original. 
He  seems  to  have  been  indebted  especially  to  his  teacher  Nausiphanes. 
None  the  less,  he  abuses  Nausiphanes  and  all  other  older  and  con- 
temporary philosophers. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  193 

way  of  life  and  made  use  of  traditional  philosophy  only 
to  defend  and  to  establish  ''the  faith."  We  have  then  two 
questions  to  put  and  to  answer:  What  was  the  Epicurean 
faith?  and,  How  did  the  Epicurean  defend  this  faith 
philosophically?  Let  us  first  study  the  faith.  Pleasure 
is  the  end  of  life.  "  Every  pleasure  is  therefore  a  good  on 
account  of  its  own  nature,  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
every  pleasure  is  worthy  of  being  chosen;  just  as  every 
pain  is  an  evil,  and  yet  every  pain  must  not  be  avoided. 
But  it  is  right  to  estimate  all  these  things  by  the  measure- 
ment and  view  of  what  is  suitable  and  unsuitable;  for  at 
times  we  may  feel  the  good  as  an  evil,  and  at  times,  on  the 
contrary,  we  may  feel  the  evil  as  good.  And,  we  think 
contentment  a  great  good,  not  in  order  that  we  may  never 
have  but  a  little,  but  in  order  that,  if  we  have  not  much, 
we  may  make  use  of  a  Httle,  being  genuinely  persuaded 
that  those  men  enjoy  luxury  most  completely  who  are  the 
best  able  to  do  without  it;  and  that  everything  which  is 
natural  is  easily  provided,  and  what  is  useless  is  not  easily 
procured.  And  simple  flavors  give  as  much  pleasure  as 
costly  fare,  when  everything  that  can  give  pain,  and  every 
feeling  of  want,  is  removed;  and  corn  and  water  give  the 
most  extreme  pleasure  when  any  one  in  need  eats  them.  |i 

To  q,ccustom  one's  seLL  therefore,  to  simple  and  inexpen-  /»  »f,  i 
sive  habits  is  a  great  ingredient  injheperfecting  of  health.  .^^  ^- 
and  makes  a  man  treej^n  hesitation  with  respect  to_the 
necessarvjisesonife.  And  when  we,  on  certain  occasions, 
fall  in  with  more  sumptuous  fare  it  makes  us  in  a  better 
disposition  towards  it,  and  renders  us  fearless  with  respect 
to  fortune.  When,  therefore,  we  say  that  pleasure  jg^a 
chief  good,  we  are  not  speaking  of  the  pleasures  of  the  de^^ 
baucheH  rnanT  or  those  whicfa-jfe  m  sensual  enjoyment, 
as  some  think  who  are  ignorant,  and  who  do  not  entertaui 
our  opinions,  or  else  interpret  them  perversely;  but  we 
mean  the  freedom_of  the  body  from  pain.  andof^the.Jsaul 


194      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

from  confusion.  For  it  is  not  continued  drinkings  and 
revels,  or  tBe  enjoyment  of  female  society,  or  feasts  of 
fish  and  other  such  things,  as  a  costly  table  supplies,  that 
make  Hfe  pleasant,  but  sober  contemplation,  which  ex- 
amines into  the  reasons  for  all  choice  and  avoidance,  and 
which  puts  to  flight  the  vain  opinions  from  which  the 
greater  part  of  the  confusion  arises  which  troubles  the  soul. 

"Now,  the  beginning  and  the  greatest  good  of  all  these 
things  is  prudence,  on  which  account  prudence  is  some- 
thing more  valuable  than  even  philosophy,  inasmuch  as 
all  the  other  virtues  spring  from  it,  teaching  us  that  it  is 
not  possible  to  live  pleasantly  unless  one  also  lives  pru- 
dently and  honorably  and  justly;  and  that  one  cannot 
live  prudently  and  honestly  and  justly  without  living 
pleasantly;  for  the  virtues  are  connate  with  living  agree- 
ably, and  living  agreeably  is  inseparable  from  the  virtues. 
Since,  who  can  you  think  better  than  that  man  who  has 
holy  opinions  respecting  the  gods,  and  who  is  utterly 
fearless  with  respect  to  death,  and  who  has  properly  con- 
templated the  end  of  nature,  and  who  comprehends  that 
the  chief  good  is  easily  perfected  and  easily  provided ;  and 
the  greatest  evil  lasts  but  a  short  period,  and  causes  but 
brief  pain.  And  who  has  no  belief  in  necessity,  which  is 
set  up  by  some  as  the  mistress  of  all  things,  but  he  refers 
some  things  to  fortune,  some  to  ourselves,  because  neces- 
sity is  an  irresponsible  power,  and  because  he  sees  that 
fortune  is  unstable,  while  our  own  will  is  free;  and  this 
freedom  constitutes,  in  our  case,  a  responsibility  which 
makes  us  encounter  blame  and  praise."  ^ 

In  other  words,  seek  the  pleasures  that  are  sure  to  be 
within  reach  and  that  last.  Then  you  have  nothing  to 
fear  in  heaven  or  in  earth.  Fortune  cannot  take  such 
pleasures  from  you,  for  they  are  the  kind  that  depend  only 

1  Quoted  from  Epicurus  by  Diogenes  Laertius,  C.  D.  Yonge  transl., 
pp.  471  f. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  195 

upon  your  own  efforts  and  self-control.  We  are  not  the 
victims  of  chance  or  fate  or  blind  ngcessity!  The  lifeof 
pleasure  is  in  the  reach  of  all  prudent  and  thoughtful  men, 
for  its  only  conditions  are  foresight  and  free-will.  JThe, 
former  wejmay  have  if  we  so  choose  and  the  latter  is  ours 
bv  nature.  Moreover,  we ITave  no  need  to  fear  what  the 
vulgar  fear,  the  gods  and  death  and  the  heavenly  bodies. 
The  gods  are  not  what  the  vulgar  conceive  them  to  be, 
nor  are  the  myths  true  of  the  gods.  The  gods  have  no 
need  of  human  worship  or  magic  offerings,  nor  are  they 
moved  by  human  wants  and  prayers.  The  gods  are  happy 
and  immortal  and  such  beings  neither  have  evil  happen 
to  them  nor  cause  evil  to  others  and  such  beings  are  not 
moved  either  by  hate  or  by  anger.  Rather  the  gods  are  in 
no  way  concerned  with  man  and  his  lot  and  they  dwell 
far  away  in  the  vast  spaces  where  they  are  not  subject  to 
the  destructive  forces  working  in  this  corruptible  world. 
Again  there  is  nothing  to  fear  in  death,  for  death  is  the 
end  of  consciousness.  ^' Death  is  nothing  to  us;  for  that 
which  is  dissolved  is  devoid  of  sensatiOTi,  and  that  which 
is  d^oid"of  sensation  is  nothmg  to  us."  When  we  are 
alive  death  is  not,  and  when  we  are  dead  we  are  not. 

In  defending  this  philosophy  of  hfe,  the  Epicurean  found 
one  general  cosmological  theory  especially  suited  to  his 
purpose,  namely,  that  of  Democritus.  All  is  but  a  coming 
together  and  separation  of  atoms.  The  soul  is  such  a 
collection  of  atoms  and  hence  at  death  its  atoms  scatter 
and  we  are  no  more.  Again,  the  phenomena  of  nature  are 
nothing  to  be  afraid  of,  because  they  are  caused  mechani- 
cally and  not  by  supernatural  or  magical  agents.  But 
to  this  older  cosmology  the  Epicurean  had  to  make  two 
radical  amendments  in  the  interest  of  his  philosophy  of 
life.  First,  in  a  world  ruled  by  mechanical  law  there  can 
be  no  freedom  of  the  will,  for  each  event  is  the  result  of 
necessity.    This  necessity  is  dogmatically  denied,  and  our 


196      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

wills  are  declared  to  be  free  and  even  the  atoms  are  said 
to  be  somewhat  free  to  move  non-mechanically.  Second, 
it  was  desirable  to  contradict  the  rationalism  of  the 
atomists  who  taught  that  the  world  of  sensation  is  illusion 
and  only  the  world  of  science  is  real.  Whatever  may 
have  suggested  to  Epicurus  his  theory  of  knowledge,  it 
is  an  extremely  clever  reconcihation  of  commonsense  and 
the  older  rationalism.  Things  are  what  they  seem  to  be, 
but  the  errors  of  sense-perception  arise  because  things  are 
also  vastly  more.  What  you  and  I  see,  is  but  one  out 
of  countless  aspects  of  a  thing,  hence  we  err  if  we  mistake 
one  aspect  for  another  or  if  we  take  one  aspect  for  the  en- 
tire nature  of  the  thing.^  These  two  amendments  of  the 
Democritic  cosmology  enabled  the  Epicurean  to  take  the 
world  as  real  much  in  the  way  commonsense  judges  it 
to  be  and  to  preach  the  commonsense  doctrine  that  effort 
counts,  that  we  can  if  we  but  will. 

In  short,  be  hard-headed,  set  aside  superstitious  fears, 
get  rid  of  the  terrors  of  death  and  of  a  life  beyond  death, 
take  the  world  as  you  find  it,  count  on  your  own  effort 
and  perseverance,  live  the  happiest  hfe  you  can,  value  the 
pleasures  that  last  and  that  can  be  surely  obtained,  value 
friendship  and  be  loyal  to  your  fellows.  Life  is  well  worth 
while  provided  we  rid  it  of  human  errors  and  truly  take 
matters  into  our  own  hands.  The  chie.f  errors  arej^yp, 
groundless  and  superstitious  feais  and  a  false  valuation 
of  what  constitutes  happiness. 

1  Consider  this  modern  instance.  One  man  sees  an  object  as  red 
and  another  is  color  bUnd  and  sees  it  as  gray.  Can  an  object  be 
both  red  and  gray  in  the  same  part  and  at  the  same  instant?  Yes, 
provided  red  is  a  compound  of  which  gray  is  an  element.  That  is 
to  say,  we  who  see  the  red,  see  the  total  color;  but  the  color  blind  who 
sees  the  gray  sees  but  an  element  in  the  red,  still  an  element  that  is 
truly  present.  Now  the  color  blind  makes  an  error  only  in  mistaking 
the  color  he  sees  for  the  entire  color.  In  other  words,  the  error  is  not, 
this  object  is  gray,  but  is,  this  object  is  only  gray. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  197 

For  further  study  read: 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  Epicurus,  1911; 
Wallace,  W.,  Epicureanism,  1880; 
Hicks,  R.  D.,  Stoic  and  Epicurean,  1910; 
Bakewell,  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,  290-316; 
Diogenes  Laertius,  Lives  and  Opinions  of  Eminent  Philoso- 
phers (Letters  of  Epicurus) ; 
Lucretius  (transl.  Bailey),  The  Nature  of  Things,  1910; 
Pater,  W.,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  1892. 

4.  The  Stoic  schooL^ — In  spite  of  the  many  common 
features  that  make  both  Epicurean  and  Stoic  men  of  their 
age  there  is  a  marked  contrast  between  the  ways  of  life 
they  preach  to  mankind.  As  we  have  seen :  the  Epicurean 
is  hard-headed,  asking  nothing  of  the  gods  and  needing 
only  his  free  will  and  the  attainability  of  happiness  by  the 
prudent.  In  contrast,  the  Stoic  not  only  teaches  man's 
dependence  upon  God  but  also  urges  man  to  trust  in  (jod_ 
completely,  thisTrust  bemg  man's  highest  and  ultimat^ 
only  virtue.  The  Epicurean  tells  of  a  world  ruled  by  me- 
chanical Torces  and  the  chance  configurations  of  atoms. 
Xhg  Stoic  tells  of  a  world  guided  in  its  transformations 
by  IVovidence/a^teleologicaj^woridj  and  a  world  that  js 
fundamentally  and  as  a  totality  goo37  Here  according 
to  the  Sloic  is  the  secret  of  the  higher  life: — Live  true  to 
this  faith  in  the  divine  providence,  or  world-reason,  De- 
sh'e  only  what  God  desires;  call  nothing  really  evil ;  fear 
nothingJoiLali  is  of  God ;  will  what  God  wills. 

Evidently  if  taken  literally  and  practised  faithfully  this 
philosophy  of  life  would  end  in  moral  paralysis.  If  all  is 
good,  nothing  is  evil;  and  if  nothing  is  evil,  what  is  there 
for  the  will  to  choose?    Life  becomes  complete  indifference 

^  The  Stoic  school  was  founded  by  Zeno  of  Citium  in  the  island  of 
Cyprus.  He  was  according  to  tradition  a  Phoenician.  He  came  to 
Athens  in  314  B.  C,  studied  under  several  philosophers  and  founded 
his  own  school  in  294. 


198      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

and  inaction.  But  the  Stoic  did  not  take  his  doctrine 
Hterally.^  The  will  has  something  to  do.  Man  has  evil 
to  fight.  Good  and  bad  are  distinct  and  it  is  important 
not  to  confuse  the  two.  But  what  is  good?  What  God 
does  as  opposed  to  what  man  does.  Put  into  other  words, 
nature's  ways  are  good,  and  if  man  will  but  be  truly 
natural  he  will  be  good.  But  again  a  question  arises: 
What  is  natural?  The  answer  is  not  new.  As  Socrates 
and  his  successors  found  forms  in  the  world  of  the  lifeless 
and  the  living,  so  does  the  Stoic.  Thus,  the  problem 
quickly  reduces  to  ascertaining  what  is  the  "form"  of 
man  and  this  is  quickly  ascertained  if  we  contrast  man 
and  brutes.  Brutes  are  ruled  entirely  by  instinct,  but  man 
is  endowed  with  reason.  Man  is  hereby  made  in  the  image 
of  God,  for  God  is  reason.  Therefore  to  live  the  life  true 
to  nature  is  to  be  rational,  is  to  live  guided  not  by  instinct 
but  solely  by  reason.  Admirable  as  this  sounds,  it  still 
leaves  one  puzzled  what  actually  to  do  in  the  crises  of 
life.  Reason  can  sit  as  judge  between  rival  tendencies 
but  how  shall  it  decide.  Actions  do  not  come  branded  as 
rational  or  natural,  for  to  be  rational  merely  means  to  be 
judicial  and  to  decide  without  bias  which  side  one  should 
take.  But  to  take  sides  one  has  to  know  the  law,  and  to 
render  rational  decisions  one  has  to  be  guided  by  princi- 
ples. Therefore,  to  tell  men  to  be  rational  and  to  leave 
them  ignorant  of  how  to  judge  between  rival  deeds  or  to 
harmonize  conflicting  tendencies  is  to  leave  them  morally 
helpless.  In  short,  the  Stoic  is  forced  to  get  back  to  the 
position  of  commonsense  and  find  objective  good  and  evil. 

^  Men  can  do  evil  though  God  can  counteract  their  doings  and  keep 
His  universe  as  a  whole  good.  This  is  a  favorite  religious  and  phil- 
osophical hypothesis  of  the  mystics.  The  world  as  a  whole  is  good, 
though  the  parts  are  often  evil;  or  the  evil  may  even  be  essential  to 
the  perfection  of  the  whole,  as  the  shadows  are  essential  to  the  beauty 
of  a  painting. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  199 

Some  deeds  are  inherently  good  and  some  inherently  bad, 
or  some  deeds  are  to  be  preferred  to  others.  And  when  the 
Stoic  comes  to  decide  which  is  which,  we  find  him  to  be 
of  the  same  mind  as  the  other  noble  characters  of  his  age. 
That  is,  the  age  and  not  the  Stoic  makes  the  Stoic  moral- 
ity. But  it  is  important  to  press  the  question  further. 
How  is  one  to  distinguish  the  good  from  the  bad?  The^ 
answer_given  by  the  Stoic  is:  The  universal  belief  of  m^," 
the  consensus  gentium  will  telTT  ine  Stoic  puts  it  also, 
mankind  has  inborn  information  in  the  sense  that  there  are 
born  in  man  faculties  of  judging  infallibly  and  these  facul- 
ties will  intuitively  tell  what  is  good  and  bad.  That  is  to 
say,  there  is  no  principle  by  which  the  good  is  to  be  defined 
as  distinct  from  the  bad,  for  the  limit  of  analysis  is  reached 
before  such  a  principle  is  given.  The  ultimate  fact  is  that 
man  can  intuitively  decide  whether  this  is  good  or  that  is 
bad;  but  why  this  is  good  or  that  is  bad,  he  cannot  tell. 
Here  the  Stoic  seems  philosophically  inferior  to  the  Epi- 
curean with  his  doctrine  that  pleasure  is  good  and  pain 
is  evil. 

Let  us  turn  from  these  particular  problems  and  con- 
sider Stoicism  in  general  as  one  of  "the  ways  of  life"  offered 
to  man  in  these  remarkable  centuries.  Needless  to  say, 
Stoicism  was,  as  was  Epicureanism,  an  effort  of  the  man  of 
insight  and  of  self-control  to  adjust  himself  to  the  spiritual 
and  political  world  of  those  days ;  and  it  was  a  noble  effort. 
Needless  also  is  it  to  add,  Stoicism  was  a  true  offspring 
of  the  Hellenistic  age.  What  we  should  rather  consider 
is  the  specific  part  this  philosophy  played.  It  held  out^tq 
man  an  ideal  that  none  could  realize,  but  that  some_men 
could  at  least  approach.  As  a  consequence.  Stoicism  has 
been  famous  in  all  the  centuries  since  for  the  remarkable 
characters  it  produced.  Again,  Stoicism  was  a  religion 
only  for  the  extremely  intellectual  and  could  never  become 
the  religion  of  the  folk;  and,  as  a  consequence,  it  seems  to 


200      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

have  been  almost  without  influence  upon  the  popular 
religions.  Finally,  Stoicism  was  peculiarly  suited  to  the 
rigorous  morals  of  republican  Rome  and  was  therefore 
especially  successful  in  competing  with  its  rivals  for  the 
approval  of  the  great  Romans;  and  certainly  two  of  its 
greatest  triumphs  were  the  influence  it  exerted  upon  the 
Roman  law  through  the  great  Roman  jurists  who  had  ab- 
sorbed its  moral  principles,  and  the  influence  it  exerted 
upon  Roman  statesmen. 

In  contrast  with  Epicureanism  Stoicism  comes  closer  to 
being  true  to  the  age  in  its  asceticism  and  in  its  compro- 
mise with  the  superstitions,  ritual  and  magic  of  the  people. 
In  contrast  with  Christianity  it  seems  cold  and  hard- 
hearted. The  Stoic  might  relieve  a  brother's  distress  or 
go  to  the  aid  of  the  unfortunate,  but  he  did  so  as  a  rational 
moralist  and  not  as  a  fellow  sympathizer.  Pity  and  love 
of  the  brethren  seemed  to  him  weakness  and  a  danger  to 
his  philosophical  peace  of  mind.  "The  Wise  Man  was  not 
to  concern  himself  with  his  brethren,  he  was  only  to  serve 
them."  Thus  the  Stoic  morality  was  rationalism  purged 
of  emotion  and  sentiment;  and  as  such  it  was  as  truly 
pathological  in  its  extreme  as  was  the  life  it  condemned, 
the  life  of  luxury  and  debauchery  at  the  other  extreme. 

Typical  of  the  age  the  Stoic  preached  his  philosophy  as 
did  the  Epicurean;  and  this  meant  that  he  was  a  prophet 
rather  than  a  scientist.  Yet  he  too  needed  a  philosophy 
in  this  enlightened  age  to  persuade  the  learned  and  to  re- 
fute the  rival.  It  is  interesting  to  see  whither  he  went 
to  get  his  philosophical  apology,  for  genuine  philosophical 
invention  was  becoming  rapidly  a  thing  of  the  past.  He 
did  not  go  to  the  followers  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  but 
back  to  Heracleitus,  as  the  Epicurean  went  to  Democritus. 
The  ultimate  stuff  of  the  world  is  an  ever  living  and  think- 
ing fire.  Part  of  this  divine  fire  is  the  soul,  the  vital  prin- 
ciple and  the  reason  in  man.    Of  this  living  matter  all 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  201 

things  are  made  but  in  most  things  it  is  debased  by  having 
become  earth,  water,  air  and  mist;  whereas  in  man's  soul, 
in  the  heavenly  world  and  in  the  divine  formative  agents, 
or  seeds  working  throughout  nature  and  controlling  na- 
ture's development  it  is  pure  and  genuinely  divine.  All 
things  have  come  from  this  divine  physis  and  in  time  all 
things  will  return  being  burnt  up  in  the  world  conflagra- 
tion. In  turn,  world  generation  will  follow  anew  and  the 
divine  fire  will  transform  into  the  same  world  again.  Thus 
cosmical  history  is  a  repetition  of  the  same  world,  is  cycU- 
cal.  As  in  the  older  Ionic  cosmologies  the  physis  is  both 
matter  and  god,  is  both  living  and  thinking;  so  the  Stoic 
identifies  this  divine  fire  with  God  and  with  the  forms  and 
the  formative  agents  that  make  the  world  a  cosmos. 
Working  throughout  the  world  it  is  Providence,  the 
logos,  the  divine  intermediary  between  the  ultimate  God 
and  the  world.  Thus  the  doctrine  of  Heracleitus  is  easily 
adapted  to  justify  the  Stoic's  belief  in  Providence  and  in 
the  goodness  of  all  the  world. ^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Murray,  G.,  The  Stoic  Philosophy,  1915; 

Bevan,  E.,  Stoics  and  Sceptics,  1913; 

Hicks,  R.  D.,  Stoic  and  Epicurean,  1910; 

Bakewell,  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,  269-289, 
317-339. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Arnold,  E.  V.,  Roman  Stoicism,  1911; 

Seneca,  On  Benefits; 

Epictetus,  Golden  Sayings; 

Marcus  Aurelius,  Thoughts. 

5.  Neoplatonism. — In  the  third  and  second  centuries 
before  Christ  marked  differences  between  the  several  phil- 

^  The  Stoics  made  important  contributions  to  logic,  grammar  and 
the  theory  of  knowledge. 


202       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

osophical  schools  continued  to  exist  and  these  schools  re- 
mained predominantly  Greek.  By  the  beginning  of  the  first 
century,  however,  the  drift  toward  eclecticism  and  toward 
cosmopolitanism  was  bringing  them  closer  and  closer 
together  and  closer  to  Oriental  ways  of  thinking.^  XtJ^ 
drift  was  away  from  the  naturalism  of  the  pldgr  Stoics  and 
toward  Plato  and  the  Pythagoreans.  This  drift  toward 
PyEEagoreanism  is  to  be  seen  espf^^Hy'JTi  two  dQctnnea . 
First,  the_soul  is  a  distinct  sort  ofstuff  from  thephysical 
world,  andits  imprisonment  m  tfie"^odyis  arLJxHe^foom 
its  true  homeland  a  source  of  defilement.  Therefore,  the 
true  worlTorthe  moral  fife  is  not,  as  the  Stoic  taught,  to 
rationalize  life  freeing  it  from  the  instincts  and  emotions, 
but  to  purge  the  soul  of  the  flesh,  to  rid  it  of  defilement, 
to  save  the  soul.  Second,  the  Stoic  had  taught  that  nature 
is  all  one  and  divine  as  the  lonians  had  taught  long  be- 
fore; but  now  the.gclgctic  philosopher  returns  to  the  dual- 
ism oUJie_Pylliagorean,  the  dualisjii_ultimatelv_b£tweeri 
forin  and  rnatter!  TKematerial  world  is  eviT^nd  is  not  of 
God.  God  is  pure  form  and  the  source  of  order  in  the 
world.  Thus  the  whole  drama  of  fife  is  centered  about 
the  return  of  the  world  to  God.  Moreover,  this  dualism 
is  not  a  problem  merely  of  thought;  for  the  heavenly  world 
is  visible.  We  behold  it  as  we  look  up  at  the  blue  sky  and 
the  stars.  There  we  literally  see  the  divine  world,  the 
true  home  of  the  soul,  the  land  of  spirits,  the  place  to  which 
the  pure  souls  will  ascend  when  freed  from  the  body. 

^  The  most  prominent  and  seemingly  the  most  influential  leader 
in  this  movement  was  Posidonius  {fl.  c.  100  B.  C).  Following  him 
and  possibly  greatly  indebted  to  him  was  the  famous  Jewish  phi- 
losopher of  Alexandria,  Philo,  who  endeavored  to  combine  Platon- 
ism,  Judaism  and  other  Oriental  religious  doctrines.  Philo  flourished 
about  10  A.  D.  Finally  in  Rome  the  great  Roman  statesman  and 
writer  Cicero  (fl.  c.  60  B.  C),  probably  following  the  writings  of 
Posidonius,  does  for  Italy  what  Posidonius  did  for  the  eastern  Greek 
Mediterranean  world. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  203 

There  the  souls  spend  their  time  "watching  the  stars  go 
round.  This  to  us  might  not  seem  an  occupation  of  ever- 
fresh  interest,  but  the  idea  of  it  apparently  suggested  the 
perfection  of  bliss  to  the  men  of  those  days." 

This  eclecticism  is  the  beginning  of  a  movement  that 
by  the  thu-d  century  after  Christ  gave  rise  in  Alexandria 
to  a  philosophical  school  which  combines  the  Greek  and 
the  Oriental  philosophies  and  therewith  brings  ancient 
Mediterranean  thought  to  one  of  its  final  stages.  Thus 
precisely  as  in  these  days  the  emperors  were  bringing  an- 
cient political  history  to  its  final  stage  by  transforming 
the  Roman  empire  into  a  universal  state  "bearing  the 
cast  of  Oriental  as  well  as  Greco-Roman  civilization," 
so  was  this  school  of  thought  combining  the  ancient  wis- 
dom into  a  universal  philosophy.  This  universal  philoso- 
phy based  on  all  prpppHirig  HrppV  tVinnp-Vif  and  combining 
both  Greek  and  Oriental  culture  is  called  Neoplatonism.^ 
"Just  as  the  later  RornaH  Empire  was  at  once  the  suprenie 
effort  of  the  old  world  and  the  outcome  of  its  exhaustion, 
so  Neoplatonism  is  in  one  aspect  the  consummation,  in 
another  the  collapse,  of  ancient  philosophy.  Never  before 
in  Greek  or  in  Roman  speculation  had  the  consciousness 
of  man's  dignity  and  superiority  to  nature  found  such 
adequate  expression;  never  before  had  real  science  and 
pure  knowledge  been  so  undervalued  and  despised  by  the 
leader,?  of  culture  as  they  were  by  the  Neoplatonists. 
Judged  from  the  standpoint  of  empirical  science,  philoso- 
phy passed  its  meridian  in  Plato  and  Aristotle,  declined 
in  the  post-Aristotelian  systems,  and  set  in  the  darkness  of 
Neoplatonism.  But,  from  the  religious  and  moral  point 
of  view,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  ethical  'mood' 

^  Its  reputed  founder  was  Ammonius  Saccas  {fl.  c.  215  A.  D.). 
Its  greatest  systematists  were  Plotinus  {fl.  c.  250  A.  D.)  and  his 
pupil  Porphyry  {fl.  c.  275  A.  D.).  In  my  account  of  Neoplatonism 
I  am  indebted  especially  to  Harnack's  writings. 


204      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

which  Neoplatonism  endeavored  to  create  and  maintam 
is  the  highest  and  purest  ever  reached  by  antiquity."  ^ 
That  is  to  say,  in  Neoplatonism  Greek  science  goes  bank- 
rupt in  a  rehgious  ideahsm  which  renounces  all  interest 
in  the  world  and  which  despairs  of  man's  efforts  to  under- 
stand and  to  master  this  world,  in  an  idealism  which  put 
faithfully  and  universally  into  practice  would  lead  directly 
back  to  savagedom.  Here  unite  Oriental  thought  and  the 
religion  of  the  Orphic  worked  out  completely  as  a  philoso- 
phy. Indeed,  one  may  say  that  Greek  philosophy  ended, 
as  it  began  in  the  West,  an  Orphic  religion,  and  thus  that 
this  ancient  Orphic  conception  of  the  world  was  never 
outgrown  and  discarded  by  the  Mediterranean  civiliza- 
tion. Briefly  put,  Neoplatonism  as  such  contributed 
nothing  to  the  scientific  development  of  Europe,  though 
it  did  carry  within  it  to  later  generations  some  older  Greek 
learning  and  traditions.  Neoplatonism  belongs  rather 
to  the  history  of  European  religion. 

Perhaps  the  clearest  evidence  of  this  non-scientific 
character  is  to  be  seen  in  its  aforementioned  belief  and 
interest  in  the  super-rational.  Neoplatonism  gives  up  two 
worlds  in  despair,  the  world  of  commonsense  and  the  world 
of  science,  the  world  of  sense-perception  and  the  world 
of  reason.  By  giving  them  up  in  despair  I  mean  four 
things:  first,  that  man  fails  to  master  these  worlds  by 
understanding  them;  second,  that  man  cannot  but  fail, 
if  he  pursues  the  methods  of  commonsense  and  of  science; 
third,  that  the  world  cannot  be  understood  in  terms  of 
itself,  that  things  are  not  to  be  taken  literally,  that  they 
are  not  what  they  seem  but  are  an  allegory;  and  fourth, 
that  this  world  is  not  important  relatively  to  another 
world,  that  it  is  not  man's  true  home  and  normal  environ- 
ment but  that  the  important  world  is  above  the  moon. 
Now  if  life  in  this  world  below  the  moon  is  to  be  inter- 
'  Harnack,  art.  Neoplatonism,  Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed. 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  205 

preted  in  terms  of  a  world  other  than  the  world  of  science 
and  daily  life,  a  superworld,  it  must  be  apprehended  by 
methods  of  a  radically  different  kind  from  those  of  science. 
It  must  be  studied  by  faculties  other  than  sense-perception 
and  reason.  The  methods  of  apprehension  are  two :  first, 
revelation  coming  trom  the  superworld,  and  second,  the 
winning""of  the  heavenly  vision  through  the  escape  of  the 
soul  Jrom_it§„^orldly  envn-onment  and  from  the  flesh . 
Both  these  ways  were  followed  by  the  Neoplatonist  in 
common  with  the  religious  world  of  his  age.  On  the  one 
hand,  he  longed  for  a  revelation  from  God  and  either 
constantly  expected  the  coming  of  such  a  revelation  or 
believed  that  it  had  already  come,  for  example,  in  the  ages 
past  to  the  mysterious  prophets  of  the  far  East,  And  this 
longing  could  be  generalized  into  the  doctrine  that  every- 
thing about  him  and  all  of  past  history  were  filled  with 
messages  from  God.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Neoplatonist 
longed  for  the  heavenly  vision  and  struggled  to  gain  it. 
This  ecstatic  vision  is  a  mental  condition  that  ancient 
psychology  by  no  means  understood  and  that  modern 
psychology  understands  only  in  part.  The  whole  subject 
belongs  to  the  field  of  suggestion,  hypnosis,  auto-sugges- 
tion, dissociation,  trance,  hysteria  and  other  forms  of  ab- 
normal mental  fife.  I  have  called  it  the  super-rational. 
The  way  thereto  is  fasting  and  prayer,  or  long  meditation, 
or  whatever  can  cause  auto-hypnosis.  In  this  condition 
the  heavens  open  and  the  divine  mysteries  are  uncovered, 
things  are  seen  that  no  tongue  can  describe  and  that  the 
mind  of  man  cannot  comprehend. 

Let  not  the  student,  however,  judge  from  this  that  the 
experiences  of  the  mystic  are  not  to  be  respected.  The 
mystic  insight  like  the  poetic  insight  has  not  only  its 
right  to  be  heard  but  also  its  unique  message  of  great 
import.  The  mystics  have  given  Europe  her  great  spiritual 
and  devotional  classics  and  have  profoundly  enriched  the 


206      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

spiritual  life  of  the  western  world.  Man  has  needs  and 
longings  that  cannot  be  satisfied  by  science;  and  the  days 
of  the  late  Roman  Empire  were  a  time  in  which  these  long- 
ings were  most  intense,  and  in  which  the  great  minds  were 
devoted  to  meeting  a  particular  spiritual  need,  a  time  in 
which  men  cried  aloud  to  God  with  St.  Augustine:  "Thou 
madest  us  for  Thyself,  and  our  heart  is  restless,  until  it 
repose  in  Thee."  Man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone.  But, 
as  Harnack  has  said,  men  knew  this  before  Neoplatonism. 
The  deeper  truth  that  Neoplatonism  added  and  enforced 
was:  Man  cannot  live  by  knowledge  alone. 

Here^'the'perlment  question  arises:  WHy^did  not  Neo- 
platonism succeed  in  giving  the  Roman  world  a  universal 
religion,  why  did  it  fail  to  do  what  Christianity  succeeded 
in  doing?  The  answer  is,  it  was  a  religion  of  the  philosoph- 
ically minded  and  not  a  folk  religion.  It  asked  the  peo- 
ple to  live  a  life  of  reflection  and  asceticism  beyond  their 
powers.  It  did  not  give  them  a  vfew  of  God  and  heaven 
that  was  concrete  enough.  Its  worship  was  a  mood  or 
an  emotional  state  that  was  not  directed  toward  concrete 
objects  such  as  the  folk  will  persist  in  worshipping.  It 
lacked  a  great  personal  founder  and  his  personality;  and 
even  with  the  patronage  of  the  Roman  emperor,  Julian,  it 
failed  to  excite  the  respect  and  obedience  of  the  people. 

The  most  genuinely  philosophical  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Neoplatonic  movement  was  Plotinus.  After  Plotinus 
Neoplatonism  declined  steadily  toward  the  religion  and 
theology  of  the  masses.  Accordingly  let  us  study  briefly 
Plotinus'  philosophj'-.  His  doctrine  is  of  course  mysticism 
and  typical  of  mysticism  has  two  parts,  a  theoretical  part 
and  a  practical  part.  The  theoretical  part  explains  the 
origin  and  the  nature  of  the  soul  and  its  departure  from  its 
first  estate.  The  practical  part  tells  how  the  soul  may 
make  its  way  back  to  that  first  estate.  To  explain  the 
origin  of  the  soul  requires  Plotinus  to  give  us  a  general 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  207 

theory  of  the  world.  There  are  three  levels  to  reality  that 
are  prominent  even  as  we  casually  look  at  the  world  and 
these  were  especially  prominent  to  the  ancient  thinker. 
Below  us  is  the  world  of  lifeless  material  things,  then  next 
the  world  of  living  things  and  especially  of  man  and  his 
mind,  third  is  what  we  often  call  the  laws  of  nature  which 
man's  mind  discovers  and  regards  as  the  proper  object  of 
science.  But  is  there  not  some  higher  level  beyond  and 
behind  these  laws?  Yes,  God  is  behind  them.  So  there  is 
a  fourth  level.  Plotinus  endeavored  in  the  notions  of  his 
age  to  show  men  the  character  of  this  world  of  the  four 
levels.  First  is  God  or  the  ultimate  being.  He  is  beyond 
the  laws  of  nature,  the  subject-matter  of  science;  therefore 
He  cannot  be  described  in  the  terms  of  science,  or  rational 
thought.  He  is  super-rational,  which  means  that  every 
possible  concept  that  we  use  to  define  Him  fails.  Even 
the  word  "exist"  is  inadequate.  God  is  beyond  all  that  is 
denoted  by  such  words  as  good,  exist,  and  infinite.  The 
same  inadequacy  is  present  in  calling  Him  the  creator,  for 
creation  is  a  process  beyond  science  and  beyond  even  the 
notion  named  process.  Thus  the  world  came  from  God, 
but  in  a  way  we  cannot  conceive.  Its  creation  cost  God 
nothing  for  it  comes  perpetual^  from  God  without  alter- 
ing God,  without  His  moving  and  without  the  force  in  the 
Godhead  diminishing.  The  first  thing  that  came  from 
God  was  the  second  level,  the  laws  of  nature,  that  is,  the 
world  of  the  reason.  From  this  in  turn  came  the  third 
level,  a  level  between  the  world  of  material  objects  and  the 
laws  of  nature,  or,  to  use  Plotinus'  term,  soul.  Thus  came 
the  souls  of  men  which  make  them  capable  of  dealing 
with  the  things  of  the  reason  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
material  things  on  the  other  hand;  and  thus  came  the 
world-soul,  the  great  power  that  in  the  ordinary  sense  is 
the  world-creator.  The  world-soul  was  needed,  we  may 
say,  to  get  the  laws  of  nature  incarnated  in  the  material 


208       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

world  so  that  it  would  no  longer  be  a  world  of  formless, 
qualityless,  characterless  matter  but  the  world  of  form  and 
order,  the  world  of  things,  the  cosmos.  All  then  ulti- 
mately has  come  from  God;  but  intervening  between  God 
and  the  lowest  level  are  these  two  necessary  orders  of  being, 
the  laws  or  forms  and  the  souls.  Coming  from  God,  the 
world  is  good  and  its  so-called  evil  is  a  necessary  element 
which  amounts  simply  to  a  negative  characteristic  to  be 
identified  with  formless  matter.  Matter,  the  ultimate 
neutral  characterless  stuff,  does  not  get  perfectly  formed 
and  so  its  evil  or  imperfection  is  precisely  this  absence  of 
perfection.  Or  put  in  other  words,  as  we  descend  through 
the  levels  from  God  we  pass  farther  from  God  and  the 
divine  is  present  in  the  world  to  a  less  and  less  degree. 
In  still  other  words,  the  world  is  a  scale  from  the  ineffable 
Godhead  to  the  material  world  about  us,  in  which  the  di- 
vine gradually  decreases  from  infinity  to  zero.  Finally, 
in  this  world  that  owes  its  existence  or  form  to  the  ultimate 
being  is  a  tendency  to  return  whence  it  has  come,  a  longing 
for  the  heavenly  home. 

This  introduces  the  practical  philosophy,  or  the  way 
back  to  God.  It  is  a  matter  of  retracing  our  steps,  and  as 
there  have  been  stages  away  from  Godso  there  are  stages 
backjo'Go^j.  These  stages  are  an  interestmg  index  of  the 
spiritual  and  moral  life  of  the  age.  First,  and  lowest,  is 
the  life  of  the  good  citizen,  the  civil  virtues;  but  these  do 
not  purify  the  soul.  Second,  are  the  virtues  that  free  the 
soul  from  sensuality  and  lead  it  back  from  the  material 
world  to  the  world  of  science,  to  spirituality.  These  vir- 
tues are  attained  by  the  ascetic  life.  But  it  is  not  enough 
to  become  spiritual  and  to  be  free  from  matter  or  sin,  for 
there  is  a  still  higher  stage  than  the  reason,  there  is  God. 
Third,  then,  is  the  highest  stage,  man  is  to  become  God. 
This  stage  is  to  be  reached  through  the  contemplative 
study  of  God,  not  by  science  or  reason,  which  will  carry  us 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCHOOLS  209 

no  farther  than  to  the  forms,  but  by  super-rational  con- 
templation and  ecstasy  through  which  the  soul  quite 
escapes  from  all  but  its  divine  nature.  In  short,  the  soul 
must  "pass  through  a  spiritual  curriculum.  Beginning 
with  the  contemplation  of  corporeal  things  in  their  multi- 
plicity and  harmony,  it  then  retires  upon  itself  and  with- 
draws into  the  depths  of  its  own  being,  rising  thence  to 
the  reason,  nous,  the  world  of  ideas.  But  even  there  it 
does  not  find  the  Highest,  the  One;  it  still  hears  a  voice 
saying,  'not  we  have  made  ourselves.'  The  last  stage  is 
reached  when,  in  the  highest  tension  and  concentration, 
beholding  in  silence  and  utter  forgetfulness  of  all  things, 
it  is  able  as  it  were  to  lose  itself.  Then  it  may  see  God, 
the  fountain  of  life,  the  source  of  being,  the  origin  of  all 
good,  the  root  of  the  soul.  In  that  moment  it  enjoys  the 
highest  indescribable  bliss ;  it  is  as  it  were  swallowed  up  of 
divinity,  bathed  in  the  light  of  eternity."  ^  We  are  told 
that  Plotinus  attained  to  this  ecstatic  union  with  God  at 
least  four  times. 

Here  we  behold  a  way  of  life  not  peculiar  to  this  one 
school  but  to  the  age  and  long  after  the  age  to  medieval 
Christianity,  a  way  of  life  in  which  the  thing  of  supreme 
value  is  the  vita  contemplativa,  the  life  of  prayer  and  medi- 
tation about  heavenly  things,  and  the  mystic  vision  of 
the  ecstatic  saint.  According  to  this  philosophy  of  life 
man  is  not  of  this  world  but  of  another  world  and  the 
supreme  enterprise  of  his  life  is  to  get  back  to  the  world 
to  which  he  belongs.  To  be  virtuous  is  not  to  be  a  good 
and  efficient  citizen,  for  that  is  but  to  take  the  first  step  and 
therefore  to  take  one  liable  to  be  thought  lightly  of.  The 
highest  virtue  is  rather  to  crucify  the  flesh  and  to  rise  freed 
from  the  body  into  a  world  that  passes  human  understand- 
ing. 

These  three  schools,  the  Epicurean,  the  Stoic  and  the 
1  Harnack,  ibid. 


210       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Neoplatonic,  each  endeavored  to  give  the  intellectual  man 
a  way  of  life.  The  two  earlier  schools  evidently  formed 
a  transitional  stage  to  the  last,  and  even  in  the  days  of 
their  greatest  prosperity  had  to  struggle  against  rehgious 
influences  which  indicated  whither  the  thought  of  the 
Mediterranean  world  was  tending  ever  more  strongly. 
They  themselves  soon  disappeared  in  the  general  eclecti- 
cism of  the  first  century  before  and  after  Christ  and  this 
eclectic  philosophy  kept  moving  in  the  direction  to  be 
represented  in  the  end  by  the  later  Hellenistic-Oriental 
religions  of  the  Roman  Empire,  by  Neoplatonism  and  by 
Christianity. 

For  further  study  read: 

Encycl.  Brit.,  Uth  ed.,  art.  Neoplatonism; 
Bakewell,  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy,  340-393; 
Dill,  S.,  Roman  Society  in  the  Last  Century  of  the  Western 
Empire,  2d  ed.,  1899,  Books  I,  II  and  V. 
Fw  more  extensive  study  read: 

Whittaker,  T.,  The  Neoplatonists,  1901; 
Hamack,  A.,  History  of  Dogma,  1899  (Appendix  on  Neo- 
platonism) ; 
Dill,  S.,  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius, 

2d  ed.,  1905; 
Inge,  W.  R.,  Christian  Mysticism,  1899. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE   ROMAN   LAW 

1.  Introductory. — Thus  far  it  has  been  possible  to 
record  the  history  of  ancient  thought  without  studying 
the  part  played  by  Rome;  and  this  has  been  possible, 
because  Rome  contributed  virtually  nothing  to  those 
branches  of  science  which  we  have  considered.  To  another 
branch  of  ancient  thought,  however,  to  legal  science,  Rome 
did  contribute  pre-eminently.  In  fact,  Rome  rendered 
two  chief  services  in  the  intellectual  development  of  Eu- 
rope. First,  Rome  received  and  assimilated  many  ele- 
ments of  Hellenistic  culture;  and  much  of  what  she  as- 
similated, she  carried  to  the  distant  provinces  of  the  West 
and  North.  Thus  northern  Italy,  Gaul,  Britain,  Spain 
and  Northern  Africa  were  receiving  a  Greco-Roman 
culture  during  the  last  days  of  the  Repubhc  and  during 
the  centuries  of  Imperial  Rome  until  the  Roman  church 
succeeded  the  Roman  people  as  the  teacher  of  the  Western 
world.  Second,  through  one  of  the  greatest  achievements 
of  man's  intellect,  the  Roman  private  law,  Rome  gave 
both  the  ancient  and  the  modern  world  an  enduring  legal 
philosophy. 

2.  The  entrance  of  Hellenic  culture  into  Rome. — As 
Rome  became  mistress  of  southern  Italy  and  developed 
into  a  great  commercial  center  with  its  foreign  population 
she  began  to  meet  Greek  culture.  Later  as  she  became 
mistress  of  Greece  and  of  the  remnants  of  the  Alexandrine 
empire  she  became  also  a  resort  of  Greek  teachers  and 
not  many  decades  later  she  herself  was  sending  her  own 

211 


212      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

gifted  youth  to  the  philosophical  schools  of  the  East.  At 
first,  the  constitutionally  conservative  and  provincial 
Roman  despised  the  foreign  learning  and  refinement;  but 
gradually  "conquered  Greece  conquered  her  conqueror," 
and  by  the  closing  years  of  the  Republic  Greek  philosophy 
had  become  an  indispensable  part  of  the  higher  culture  of 
the  intellectual  Roman. 

However,  "the  Roman  thinkers  never  produced  an 
independent  system  of  thought ;  they  were  eclectics,  taking 
from  different  systems  what  most  appealed  to  them.  Even 
when  they  accepted  a  S3"stem  as  a  whole,  they  modified  it 
to  suit  their  taste.  They  had  no  patience  with  subtleties, 
sophistries  and  paradoxes,  and  avoided  the  hair-split- 
tings and  fine  distinctions  in  which  the  Greeks  reveled; 
nor  were  they  fond  of  controversies  and  disputations. 
They  were  not  profound  thinkers,  but  were  governed  by 
commonsense;  'they  sought  and  found  in  philosophy 
nothing  but  a  rule  of  conduct  and  a  means  of  govern- 
ment.'" ^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Dufif,  J.  W.,  A  Literary  History  of  Rome,  1909,  18-38, 
92-117,  349-397; 

Fowler,  W.  W.,  The  Religious  Experience  of  the  Roman 
People,  1911,  357-472; 

Cicero,  On  the  Nature  of  the  Gods. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Fowler,  W.  W.,  Social  Life  at  Rome,  1909; 

Dill,  S.,  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius; 

Fowler,  W.  W.,  Rome  (Home  University  Library). 

3.  The  development  of  the  Roman  private  law. — The 

earliest  form  to  which  scholars  can  trace  the  Roman 
private  law  is  a  body  of  customs  such  as  one  finds  among 
any  barbaric  people.    On  the  one  hand,  it  is  largely  a  mat- 

iThilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  119  f. 


THE  ROMAN  LAW  213 

ter  of  custom  between  clans  and  families  in  an  agricultural 
and  patriarchal  people  with  the  individual  as  yet  not  a 
legal  person.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  largely  a  matter 
of  ritual  with  the  impUcit  legal  principle  as  yet  hardly 
perceived.  In  the  course  of  its  earlier  development  both 
of  these  aspects  were  held  to  tenaciously  and  they  dis- 
appeared almost  entirely  only  after  centuries  of  develop- 
ment. By  that  time  the  Roman  law  had  become  a  simple, 
harmonious,  highly  enlightened  and  explicit  body  of  legal 
procedure  and  principles,  a  system  of  laws  fitted  to  be  the 
legal  guide  of  the  mightiest  of  empires  populated  by  many 
and  various  peoples  and  to  be  later  the  legal  guide  and 
the  source  of  legal  inspiration  to  modern  Europe.  That 
the  ancient  customs  and  ritual  of  the  Roman  families  and 
clans  became  the  Roman  law  of  the  Empire  was  due  to  a 
group  of  happy  circumstances;  for  it  was  not  the  result 
of  foresight  but  the  result  of  a  genius  to  rule  compelled 
to  solve  complex  political  and  social  problems  one  after 
another  through  centuries. 

The  original  Roman  law,  the  Quiritary  law,  jus  Quiri- 
tium,  or  jus  civile,  was  the  law  solely  of  the  Roman  people, 
the  later  patricians.  It  was  strictly  a  law  between  fami- 
lies with  its  famous  patria  potestas  making  the  head  of  the 
family  the  only  legal  person  and  leaving  him  supreme  over 
all  matters  belonging  strictly  within  the  family.  Thus, 
doubtless,  the  Roman  law  might  have  remained,  had  not 
Rome  become  the  home  of  more  and  more  numerous 
foreigners,  the  plebeians.  These  foreigners  came  to  Rome 
as  members  of  states  now  under  Roman  hegemony,  they 
came  to  Rome  as  the  safest  home  of  trade  and  industry, 
and  they  came  as  merchants  from  distant  lands  with  whom 
Rome  had  treaties  of  trade.  At  first  Rome  could  leave 
them  to  their  own  customs  and  usages;  but  as  their  num- 
ber increased,  as  their  business  relations  with  Romans 
became  more  complex,  as  they  became  permanent  resi- 


214      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

dents,  as  they  became  land-owners  and  jQnally  as  they 
became  a  necessary  miHtary  asset,  the  Roman  state  had 
to  assume  legal  jurisdiction  over  them.  Moreover,  these 
plebeians  were  not  themselves  passive,  but  as  is  usual 
with  a  powerful  alien  population  began  to  struggle  for  and 
to  gain  for  themselves  political  and  legal  rights.  In  short, 
a  large  part  of  the  history  of  the  Roman  Republic  for  cen- 
turies is  composed  of  the  struggles  abroad  with  foreign 
states  and  of  the  struggles  at  home  between  patrician  and 
plebeian. 

Compelled  to  face  this  complex  problem  and  with  the 
native  capacity  to  solve  it,  Rome,  in  the  person  of  her 
prcetor  peregrinus  and  behind  him  of  her  students  of  the 
law,  the  jurisconsults,  of  whom  the  prsBtor  holding  his 
office  for  but  a  year  was  in  fact  merely  a  representative, 
brought  gradually  into  existence  the  jus  gentium.  As 
this  jus  gentium  developed  and  as  the  plebeians  and  Ital- 
ians became  Roman  citizens  the  new  law  tended  to  sup- 
plant the  older  law  and  to  become  in  fact  the  common  law 
of  the  Roman  people. 

May  I  quote  at  length  from  Maine's  admirable  descrip- 
tion of  this  development?  "The  most  superficial  student 
of  Roman  history  must  be  struck  by  the  extraordinary 
degree  in  which  the  fortunes  of  the  repubUc  were  affected 
by  the  presence  of  foreigners,  under  different  names,  on 
her  soil.  The  causes  of  this  immigration  are  discernible 
enough  at  a  later  period,  for  we  can  readily  understand 
why  men  of  all  races  should  flock  to  the  mistress  of  the 
world;  but  the  same  phenomenon  of  a  large  population  of 
foreigners  and  denizens  meets  us  in  the  very  earHest 
records  of  the  Roman  State.  .  .  .  Whatever  were  the 
circumstances  to  which  it  was  attributable,  the  foreign 
element  in  the  commonwealth  determined  the  whole  course 
of  Roman  history,  which,  at  all  its  stages,  is  little  more 
than  a  narrative  of  conflicts  between  a  stubborn  national- 


THE  ROMAN  LAW  215 

ity  and  an  alien  population.  ...  In  the  early  Roman 
republic  the  principle  of  the  absolute  exclusion  of  foreigners 
pervaded  the  civil  law  no  less  than  the  constitution.  The 
alien  or  denizen  could  have  no  share  in  any  institution 
supposed  to  be  coeval  with  the  state.  He  could  not  have 
benefit  of  Quiritarian  law.  .  .  .  Probably  half  as  a  meas- 
ure of  police  and  half  in  furtherance  of  commerce  juris- 
diction was  first  assumed  in  disputes  to  which  the  parties 
were  either  foreigners  or  a  native  and  a  foreigner.  The 
assumption  of  such  a  jurisdiction  brought  with  it  the 
immediate  necessity  of  discovering  some  principles  on 
which  the  questions  to  be  adjudicated  upon  could  be 
settled,  and  the  principles  applied  to  this  object  by  the 
Roman  lawyers  were  eminently  characteristic  of  the  time. 
They  refused  to  decide  the  new  cases  by  pure  Roman  civil 
law.  They  refused  to  apply  the  law  of  the  particular  state 
from  which  the  foreign  litigant  came.  The  expedient  to 
which  they  resorted  was  that  of  selecting  the  rules  of  law 
common  to  Rome  and  to  the  different  Italian  communities 
in  which  the  immigrants  were  born.  In  other  words, 
they  set  themselves  to  form  a  system  answering  to  the 
primitive  and  literal  meaning  of  jus  gentium,  that  is,  law 
common  to  all  nations.  Jus  gentium  was,  in  fact,  the  simi 
of  the  common  ingredients  in  the  customs  of  the  old  Ital- 
ian tribes,  for  they  were  all  the  nations  whom  the  Romans 
had  the  means  of  observing,  and  who  sent  successive 
swarms  of  immigrants  to  Roman  soil.  Whenever  a  partic- 
ular usage  was  seen  to  be  practised  by  a  large  number  of 
separate  races  in  common  it  was  set  down  as  part  of  the 
law  common  to  all  nations,  ov  jus  gentium.  .  .  . 

"The  circumstances  of  the  origin  of  the  jus  gentium  are 
probably  a  sufficient  safeguard  against  the  mistake  of 
supposing  that  the  Roman  lawyers  had  any  special  respect 
for  it.  It  was  the  fruit  in  part  of  their  disdain  for  all 
foreign  law,  and  in  part  of  their  disinclination  to  give  the 


216      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

foreigner  the  advantage  of  their  own  indigenous  jus  civile. 
It  is  true  that  we,  at  the  present  day,  should  probably 
take  a  very  different  view  of  the  jus  gentium,  if  we  were 
performing  the  operation  which  was  effected  by  the  Roman 
jurisconsults.  We  should  attach  some  vague  superiority 
or  precedence  to  the  element  which  we  had  thus  discerned 
underlying  and  pervading  as  great  a  variety  of  usage. 
We  should  have  a  sort  of  respect  for  rules  and  principles 
so  universal.  .  .  .  But  the  results  to  which  modern  ideas 
conduct  the  observer  are,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  reverse 
of  those  which  were  instinctively  brought  home  to  the 
primitive  Roman.  .  .  ,  The  parts  of  jurisprudence  which 
he  looked  upon  with  affection  were  exactly  those  which  a 
modern  theorist  leaves  out  of  consideration  as  accidental 
and  transitory;  the  solemn  gestures  of  the  mancipation; 
the  nicely  adjusted  questions  and  answers  of  the  verbal 
contract;  the  endless  formalities  of  pleading  and  procedure. 
The  jus  gentium  was  merely  a  system  forced  on  his  atten- 
tion by  a  political  necessity.  He  loved  it  as  little  as  he 
loved  the  foreigners  from  whose  institutions  it  was  derived 
and  for  whose  benefit  it  was  intended.  A  complete  revo- 
lution in  his  ideas  was  required  before  it  could  challenge 
his  respect,  but  so  complete  was  it  when  it  did  occur,  that 
the  true  reason  why  our  modern  estimate  of  the  jus  gen- 
tium differs  from  that  which  has  just  been  described,  is 
that  both  modern  jurisprudence  and  modern  philosophy 
have  inherited  the  matured  views  of  the  later  jurisconsults 
on  this  subject.  There  did  come  a  time  when,  from  an 
ignoble  appendage  of  the  jus  civile,  the  jus  gentium  came 
to  be  considered  a  great  though  as  yet  imperfectly  devel- 
oped model  to  which  all  law  ought  as  far  as  possible  to 
conform.  This  crisis  arrived  when  the  Greek  theory  of  a 
law  of  nature  was  applied  to  the  practical  Roman  admin- 
istration of  the  law  common  to  all  nations." 

As  has  been  mentioned  the  official  instrument  through 


THE  ROMAN  LAW  217 

which  all  of  this  was  brought  about  was  the  prcstor  peri- 
grinus.  Now  it  was  a  precautionary  custom  of  the  Roman 
people  to  obhge  "every  magistrate  whose  duties  had  any 
tendency  to  expand  their  sphere,  to  publish,  on  com- 
mencing his  year  of  office,  an  edict  or  proclamation,  in 
which  he  declared  the  manner  in  which  he  intended  to 
administer  his  department.  The  prsetor  fell  under  the 
rule  with  other  magistrates;  but  as  it  was  necessarily 
impossible  to  construct  each  year  a  separate  system  of 
principles,  he  seems  to  have  regularly  republished  his 
predecessor's  edict  with  such  additions  and  changes  as  the 
exigency  of  the  moment  or  his  own  views  of  the  law  com- 
pelled him  to  introduce.  The  praetor's  proclamation, 
thus  lengthened  by  a  new  portion  every  year,  obtained  the 
name  of  the  edidum  perpetuum,  that  is,  the  continuous  or 
unbroken  edict.  The  immense  length  to  which  it  extended, 
together  perhaps  with  some  distaste  for  its  necessarily 
disorderly  texture,  caused  the  practice  of  increasing  it  to 
be  stopped  in  the  year  of  Salvius  Julianus,  who  occupied 
the  magistracy  in  the  reign  of  the  emperor  Hadrian.  The 
edict  of  that  praetor  embraced  therefore  the  whole  body 
of  equity  jurisprudence,  which  it  probably  disposed  in 
new  and  symmetrical  order,  and  the  perpetual  edict 
is  therefore  often  cited  in  Roman  law  as  the  Edict  of 
Julianus. 

"What  were  the  limitations  by  which  these  extensive 
powers  of  the  praetor  were  restrained?  How  was  authority 
so  little  definite  to  be  reconciled  with  a  settled  condition 
of  society  and  law?  .  .  .  The  praetor  was  a  jurisconsult 
himself,  or  a  person  entu'ely  in  the  hands  of  advisers  who 
were  jurisconsults,  and  it  is  probable  that  every  Roman 
lawyer  waited  impatiently  for  the  time  when  he  should 
fill  or  control  the  great  judicial  magistracy.  In  the  inter- 
val, his  tastes,  feelings,  prejudices,  and  degree  of  enlight- 
enment were  inevitably  those  of  his  own  order,  and  the 


218       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

qualifications  which  he  ultimately  brought  to  ofl&ce  were 
those  which  he  had  acquired  in  the  practice  and  study  of 
his  profession.  .  .  . 

"The  nature  of  the  measures  attributed  to  Salvius  Ju- 
lianus  has  been  much  disputed.  Whatever  they  were, 
their  effects  on  the  Edict  are  suflficiently  plain.  It  ceased 
to  be  extended  by  annual  additions,  and  henceforward 
the  equity  jurisprudence  of  Rome  was  developed  by  the 
labours  of  a  succession  of  great  jurisconsults  who  fill  with 
their  writings  the  interval  between  the  reign  of  Hadrian 
and  the  reign  of  Alexander  Severus,  A  fragment  of  the 
wonderful  system  which  they  built  up  survives  in  the  Pan- 
dects of  Justinian,  and  supplies  evidence  that  their  works 
took  the  form  of  treatises  on  all  parts  of  Roman  law,  but 
chiefly  that  of  commentaries  on  the  Edict.  .  .  . 

''The  period  of  jurists  ends  with  Alexander  Severus. 
From  Hadrian  to  that  emperor  the  improvement  of  law 
was  carried  on,  as  it  is  at  the  present  moment  in  most 
continental  countries,  partly  by  approved  commentaries 
and  partly  by  direct  legislation.  But  in  the  reign  of  Alex- 
ander Severus  the  power  of  growth  in  Roman  equity  seems 
to  be  exhausted,  and  the  succession  of  jurisconsults  comes 
to  a  close.  The  remaining  histoiy  of  the  Roman  law  is  the 
histoiy  of  the  imperial  constitutions,  and,  at  the  last,  of 
attempts  to  codify  what  had  now  become  the  unwieldy 
body  of  Roman  jurisprudences.  We  have  the  latest  and 
most  celebrated  experiment  of  this  kind  in  the  Corpus 
Juris  of  Justinian."  ^ 

4.  The  jus  naturale. — "The  jus  naturale,  or  law  of 
nature,  is  simply  the  jus  gentium  or  law  common  to  nations 
seen  in  the  light  of  a  peculiar  theory."  This  theory  is  the 
law  of  nature  that  we  have  met  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
Stoics  and  which  had  a  long  history  in  the  earlier  periods 
of  Greek  thought.  In  short,  in  the  law  of  nature  Roman 
1  Maine,  Ancient  Law,  Chap.  III. 


THE  ROMAN  LAW  219 

legal  thought  and  Greek  ethical  thought  meet.  Of  the  Hel- 
lenistic philosophies  that  began  to  make  their  way  to 
Rome  as  early  as  the  second  century  before  Christ  Stoicism 
was  the  most  easily  welcomed.  From  the  first  century 
before  Christ  through  the  era  of  the  Antonine  Caesars 
when  Roman  Stoicism  had  its  most  famous  disciples  and 
through  the  very  era  when  Roman  equity  was  reaching 
its  highest  stage  of  development  there  was  almost  an 
alliance  between  the  Roman  lawyers  and  the  Roman  Stoic 
philosophers.  This  does  not  imply  that  legal  rules  were 
derived  from  Stoic  doctrine;  but  it  indicates  the  spirit 
behind  the  work  of  the  jurist  and  the  power  that  helped 
him  to  emancipate  himself  from  the  older  legal  tradition 
and  to  simplify  and  to  generalize  the  Roman  law  into  the 
jus  gentium}  Again  the  idea  of  the  law  of  nature  gave  to 
the  jus  gentium  all  the  "prestige  of  philosophical  author- 
ity" and  associated  it  with  the  ideal  state  of  man,  believed 
by  the  philosopher  to  be  the  life  in  accord  with  nature. 
In  a  sentence,  the  influence  of  Hellenistic  philosophy  upon 
Roman  law  was  "  that  the  spirit  of  critical  enquiry  aroused 
and  fostered  by  hterary  and  philosophical  study,  seriously 
and  conscientiously  undertaken,  contributed  greatly  to 
promote  a  new  departure  in  jurisprudence  that  became 
very  marked  in  the  time  of  Cicero — the  desire  to  subordi- 
nate form  to  substance,  the  word  spoken  to  the  will  it 
was  meant  to  manifest,  the  abstract  rule  to  the  individual 
case  to  which  it  was  proposed  to  apply  it."  However,  the 
jus  naturale  and  the  jus  gentium  must  not  be  identified. 
The  former  was  a  philosophical  principle,  a  general  ethical 

^  "The  ideas  of  simplification  and  generalization  had  always  been 
associated  with  the  conception  of  nature;  simpHcity,  symmetry, 
and  intelligibility  came  therefore  to  be  regarded  as  the  characteristic 
of  a  good  legal  system,  and  the  taste  for  involved  language,  multi- 
pUed  ceremonials,  and  useless  difficulties  disappeared  altogether." 
The  quotations  in  this  section  are  from  Goudy,  art.  "Roman  Law," 
Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed. 


220      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

attitude,  an  ideal.  Its  influence  upon  the  law  was  by  its 
spirit  rather  than  by  any  incorporation  of  its  specific 
principles.^  In  other  words,  the  point  of  contact  between 
the  old  jus  gentium  and  the  law  of  nature  was  equity,  and 
equity  meant  the  constant  levelling  or  removing  of  irregu- 
larities and  the  eliminating  of  a  multitude  of  arbitrary 
distinctions  between  classes  of  men  and  kinds  of  property 

^  "Voigt  thus  summarizes  the  characteristics  of  this  speculative 
Roman  JUS  naturale: — (1)  its  potential  universal  appUcabihty  to  all 
men,  (2)  among  all  peoples,  (3)  at  all  times,  and  (4)  its  correspond- 
ence with  the  innate  conviction  of  right.  Its  propositions,  as  gath- 
ered from  the  pages  of  the  jurists  of  the  period,  he  formulates  thus: — 
(1)  recognition  of  the  claims  of  blood;  (2)  duty  of  faithfulness  to 
engagements;  (3)  apportionment  of  advantage  and  disadvantage, 
gain  and  loss,  according  to  the  standard  of  equity;  (4)  supremacy  of 
the  voluntatis  ratio  over  the  words  or  form  in  which  the  will  is  mani- 
fested." 

"It  was  regard  for  the  first  that,  probably  pretty  early  in  the  prin- 
cipate,  led  the  pr£etors  to  place  emancipated  children  on  a  footing 
of  equaUty  with  unemancipated  in  the  matter  of  succession,  and  to 
admit  to  succession  collateral  kindred  through  females  as  well  as 
those  related  through  males;  and  that,  in  the  reigns  of  Hadrian  and 
Marcus  Aurelius  respectively,  induced  the  senate  to  give  a  mother 
a  preferred  right  of  succession  to  her  children,  and  vice  versa.  It 
was  respect  for  the  second  that  led  to  the  recognition  of  the  validity 
of  what  was  called  a  natural  obligation, — one  that,  because  of  some 
defect  of  form  or  something  peculiar  in  the  position  of  the  parties,  was 
ignored  by  the  jiis  civile  and  incapable  of  being  made  the  ground  of 
an  action  for  its  enforcement,  yet  might  be  given  effect  to  indirectly 
by  other  equitable  remedies.  Regard  for  the  third  was  nothing  new 
in  the  jurisprudence  of  the  period;  the  Repubhc  had  already  ad- 
mitted as  a  principle  that  a  man  was  not  to  be  unjustifiably  enriched 
at  another's  cost;  the  jurists  of  the  empire,  however,  gave  it  a  wider 
application  than  before,  and  used  it  as  a  key  to  the  solution  of  many 
a  difficult  question  in  the  domain  of  the  law  of  contract.  As  for  the 
fourth,  it  was  one  that  had  to  be  applied  with  deUcacy;  for  the  volun- 
tas could  not  in  equity  be  preferred  to  its  manifestation  to  the  preju- 
dice of  other  parties  who  in  good  faith  had  acted  upon  the  latter. 
We  have  many  evidences  of  the  skilful  way  in  which  the  matter  was 
handled,  speculative  opinion  being  held  in  check  by  considerations 
of  individual  interest  and  general  utiUty." 


THE  ROMAN  LAW  221 

recognized  by  the  old  jus  civile.    Thus  equity  meant  sim- 
pHfying  and  generalizing  the  law. 

Yet  right  here  lay  one  of  the  greatest  dangers  to  which 
the  Roman  jurist  was  exposed,  a  danger  that  the  Greek 
thinker  did  not  escape,  but  that  the  Roman  did.  The 
Greek  was  essentially  a  theorist  but  the  Roman  was  what 
in  our  day  is  called  a  pragmatist.  The  Greek  generalized 
the  law  so  that  it  became  a  mere  general  ethical  ideal 
that  threw  little  light  on  the  complex  problem  of  litigation 
and  justice  between  man  and  man;  whereas  the  Roman 
lawyer  never  lost  sight  of  the  complex  problem  and  in 
laying  down  his  ideals  never  set  aside  the  concrete  rules 
of  the  law.^  Rather  he  sought  the  ideal  precisely  in  these 
concrete  and  multitudinous  specific  cases  of  rights  and 
obligations.  Had  he  not  done  so,  the  Roman  law  could 
never  have  become  the  legal  guide  of  Europe  then  and  in 
the  centuries  to  come  but  would  have  been  as  uninfluential 
as  the  noble  but  impractical  idealism  of  the  Stoic  creed. 
The  cause  of  this  difference  between  Greek  and  Roman, 
apart  from  national  temperament,  was  perhaps,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  rapidity  with  which  the  Greek  passed  from 
the  barbaric  law  of  the  past  to  the  Greek  constitutions  and 
morals  of  the  golden  age,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 

^  "A  remark  of  Voigt's  on  the  subject  is  well  worthy  of  being  kept 
in  view,  that  the  risk  which  arose  from  the  setting  up  of  the  precepts 
of  a  speculative  jus  naturale,  as  derogating  from  the  rules  of  the  jiis 
civile,  was  greatly  diminished  through  the  position  held  by  the  jurists 
of  the  early  Empire.  Their  jus  respondendi  made  them  in  a  sense 
legislative  organs  of  the  state,  so  that,  in  introducing  principles  of  the 
jus  naturale,  or  of  cequum  et  bonum,  they  at  the  same  moment  definetl 
them  and  gave  them  the  force  of  law.  They  were,  he  says,  'philoso- 
phers in  the  sphere  of  law,  searchers  after  the  ultimate  truth;  but, 
while  they — usually  in  reference  to  a  concrete  case — sought  out  the 
truth  and  applied  what  they  had  found,  they  combined  with  the 
freedom  from  constraint  of  speculation,  the  life-freshness  of  practice, 
and  the  power  of  assuring  the  operativeness  of  their  abstract  proposi- 
tions.'" 


222      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

slowness  and  practical  urgency  that  mark  the  development 
of  Roman  law.  In  short,  if  the  Roman  law  tells  us  to 
give  to  every  man  his  due,  it  does  not  stop  with  this  ab- 
stract ideal  but  it  tells  us  in  concrete  detail  what  is  a  man's 
due.  This  the  Greek  moralist  failed  to  do.  That  the 
Roman  jurists  did  so,  makes  their  contribution  to  the 
intellectual  history  of  man  comparable  in  worth  with  that 
made  by  the  Greek  scientists.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Dunning,  W.  A.,  A  History  of  Political  Theories,  1902, 

chapter  IV; 
Maine,  H.  S.,  Ancient  Law,  5th  ed.,  1873,  chapters  II-IV; 
Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  chapter 

XLIV; 
Smith,    M.,    Roman    Law    in    the    English    Universities, 

Classical  Weekly,  1916,  9,  218-220. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Bryce,  J.,  Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence,  1901,  71- 

123,556-606,745-781; 
Sohm,  R.  (transl.  Ledlie),  The  Institutes  of  Roman  Law, 

1907,  especially  Part  I; 
Goudy,  art.  Roman  Law,  in  Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.; 
Muirhead,  J.,  Historical  Introduction  to  the  Private  Law 

of  Rome,  2d  ed.  1899; 
Jhering,  R.,  Geist  des  romischen  Rechts,  1894-1907. 

^  Among  famous  Roman  jurists  were  the  following: — Cicero  (fl.  c. 
60  B.  C.)  in  the  last  days  of  the  Republic.  His  writings  were  quite 
influential  in  the  days  of  the  Empire;  Labeo  (fl.  c.  10  B.  C.)  under  the 
emperor  Augustus;  Juhanus  (fl.  c.  140  A.  D.)  under  Hadrian  and 
Antoninus  Pius;  Gains  {fl.c.  150  A.  D.);  Papinianus  (fl.c.  200  A.  D.) 
and  Ulpianus  (fl.  c.  210  A.  D.),  his  pupil;  Paulus  (fl.  c.  210  A.  D.); 
and  Modestinus  (fl.  c.  250  A.  D.). 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE    CHRISTIAN   PHILOSOPHY 

1.  Introductory. — The  extreme  hypothesis  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  outcome  merely  of  general  Oriental  and 
Hellenistic  religious  tendencies  is  rejected  by  the  best 
scholarship;  for  according  to  this  scholarship  both  a  real 
personality  and  an  original  and  deep  personal  religious 
experience  underlie  Christianity.  Moreover,  the  original 
gospel  of  Jesus  is  remarkably  free  from  Hellenistic  phi- 
losophy, though  it  presupposes  of  course  the  contemporary 
religion  of  Judea  and  the  holy  writings  of  the  Jewish 
Church.  However,  what  is  true  of  Christianity  at  its 
source  is  no  longer  true  of  Christianity,  the  universal  re- 
ligion, the  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  fourth  and 
later  centuries;  for  Christianity  had  by  that  time  become 
twofold  in  nature.  On  the  one  hand,  still  preserved  in  it 
was  the  deep  loyalty  to  the  historic  Jesus  and  to  His 
gospel;  but  on  the  other  hand,  so  large  an  element  of 
Oriental  and  Hellenistic  religion  and  philosophy  had 
entered  it  that  Christianity  had  become,  not  only  because 
of  its  membership  but  also  because  of  its  organization  and 
theology,  a  Mediterranean  religion.  It  had  become  the 
Holy  Roman,  or  universal  Church. 

These  facts  indicate  in  historic  Christianity  two  distinct 
tendencies  because  of  which,  no  matter  how  completely 
united,  the  church  persists  in  tending  to  break  apart.  The 
older  tendency  exhibited  in  a  large  part  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment record  teaches  a  law  to  govern  men's  lives  and  prom- 
ises for  obedience  to  this  law  a  blessed  immortality.     The 

223 


224      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

second  tendency,  distinctly  Hellenistic  and  Oriental  and  ex- 
hibited already  in  the  Pauline  and  Johannine  parts  of  the 
New  Testament,  teaches  a  way  by  which  man's  corrupt  and 
fallen  nature  is  to  be  saved  from  the  flesh  and  is  to  be  made 
again  holy,  spiritual  and  divine.  The  working  out  of 
this  latter  doctrine  as  the  solution  of  a  great  philosophical 
problem  gave  rise  to  the  Christian  philosophy  and  the 
working  out  of  this  doctrine  as  a  great  religious  principle 
gave  rise  to  the  religion  of  the  universal  church  of  the 
Mediterranean  world. 

The  tendency  to  find  in  Christianity  merely  a  law  of 
life  taught  by  the  divine  Master  threatened  at  first  to  make 
the  new  religion  only  a  Jewish  sect  and  to  restrain  it  from 
becoming  a  universal  religion.  In  later  days  it  threatened 
to  interpret  the  nature  of  the  Christ  as  merely  that  of  a 
created  divine  agent  by  which  the  ultimate  God  revealed 
His  will  and  truth  to  men.  In  its  extreme  form  this  tend- 
ency was  against  all  other  religious  tendencies  both  within 
and  without  the  Church  and  therefore  was  condemned  as 
heresy  and  overcome. 

The  tendency  to  find  in  Christianity  not  only  a  law  of 
life  but  chiefly  a  supernatural  means  by  which  man's 
fallen  nature  might  be  restored  and  made  divine  led  some 
believers  from  the  beginning  to  preach  Christianity  as  a 
religion  of  both  Jew  and  Gentile  and  to  eliminate  from  it 
its  associated  Jewish  characteristics.  The  first  great 
leader  in  this  broader  enterprise  was  St.  Paul,  the  Apostle 
to  the  Gentiles.  He  was  well  fitted  for  this  noble  mission. 
A  Jew  trained  in  the  strictest  school  of  the  Jewish  law  he 
grew  up  in  Tarsus,  one  of  the  thoroughly  Hellenistic  cities 
of  Asia  Minor  and  in  an  environment  that  had  earlier 
absorbed  the  Stoic  conception  of  the  world  and  the  Stoic 
doctrine  of  life.  Christ  thus  came  to  appeal  to  St.  Paul 
not  only  as  the  fulfiller  of  the  Jewish  law  but  as  the  one 
desired  and  expected  of  all  nations.    Therefore  the  mission 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  225 

of  Jesus  seemed  to  him  to  be  to  all  peoples,  and  he  hoped 
to  live  himself  to  carry  the  divine  message  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth.    He  did  help  to  carry  it  as  far  as  Rome. 

As  the  former  tendency  led  the  Church  to  conceive  of 
Christ  as  the  agent  of  God,  as  a  created  being  between 
God  and  the  world  and  identifiable  with  the  logos  of  Greek 
philosophy;  so  the  latter  tendency  led  the  Church  to  con- 
ceive the  Master  as  the  incarnate  God,  identified  it  is 
true  with  the  logos  but  also  with  God,  and  to  conceive 
of  Him  as  the  means  by  which  man  is  to  be  united  again 
with  God  and  by  which  man's  fallen  nature  is  to  be  raised 
again  to  its  original  divine  character.  From  the  former 
point  of  view  the  believer  found  in  Christ  the  Jewish 
Messiah  and  teacher  sent  from  God ;  from  the  latter  point 
of  view  the  believer  found  in  Him  the  redeemer  and  the 
mystical  and  sacramental  instrument  by  which  God's 
grace  is  given  to  man.  This  latter  point  of  view  finally 
became  accepted  in  the  fourth  century  as  orthodox  and 
apostolic  after  a  bitter  struggle  with  its  rival.  It  is  es- 
pecially associated  with  the  great  church-father  Athana- 
sius.  Its  great  rival  was  in  those  days  named  Arianism 
after  another  leader,  Arius.  These  two  tendencies  in  Chris- 
tianity, the  orthodox  and  the  mystical,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  ethical  and  the  non-mystical,  on  the  other,  gave 
rise  also  to  two  radically  different  views  of  religion  and  of 
the  Church.  The  one  emphasizes  the  sacraments  as  the 
means  by  which  man  is  to  be  redeemed  and  regards  the 
Church  as  a  divine  agent  and  instrument  created  by  God 
and  coming  from  heaven  to  bring  God's  grace  to  man. 
The  other  emphasizes  the  Christian  morality  and  the 
establishment  of  God's  kingdom  on  earth  and  regards  the 
Church  merely  as  the  invisible  company  of  all  the  faithful. 
Evidently  modern  Christianity  and  the  Christian  thought 
of  to-day  exhibit  both  these  rival  tendencies  as  still  per- 
sisting and  as  still  dividing  Christians. 


226      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Two  other  characteristics  of  early  Christianity  must  be 
emphasized.  The  first  was  its  hostihty  to  culture,  learning 
and  philosophy.  The  second  was  its  intolerance  of  other 
religions.  Christianity  grew  rapidly  in  the  great  centers 
of  population  especially  among  the  slaves  and  the  poor 
and  only  slowly  made  its  way  into  the  aristocratic,  cul- 
tured and  ruling  classes.  Of  course  it  always  had  great 
minds  among  its  leaders  but  these  leaders  themselves 
exhibited  a  hostility  to  "the  wisdom  of  this  world,"  to  the 
"learning  of  this  world  which  God  had  made  foolishness," 
and  they  boasted  of  the  wisdom  hidden  from  the  wise  and 
prudent  and  revealed  unto  babes.  Hence  in  time  came  the 
famous  mottoes,  credo  quia  ahsurdum  and  credo  ut  intel- 
ligam.  However,  the  day  dawned  when,  in  spite  of  opposi- 
tion, another  spirit  began  to  manifest  itself.  Christianity 
had  to  defend  itself  and  make  itself  understood  by  the 
learned  and  the  rulers  and  had  to  satisfy  the  intellects  of 
its  own  thoughtful  followers.  This  movement  began  with 
the  so-called  Apologists  of  the  second  century  and  in  the 
third  century  in  Alexandria  developed  into  a  distinctly 
philosophical  school  studying  the  pagan  philosophers  and 
basing  Christian  theology  explicitly  upon  a  Greek  phil- 
osophical foundation.  The  result  was  that  in  a  century  the 
orthodox  theology  was  as  truly  a  Greco-Roman  philosophy 
as  was  its  great  rival,  Neoplatonism,  and  was  deeply  in- 
debted to  precisely  the  same  philosophical  sources  as  was 
the  latter.  This  could  not  have  been  different,  for  the  intel- 
lectual leaders  had  to  use  the  philosophy  of  the  age  and 
there  was  but  the  one, — the  Hellenistic. 

The  remaining  characteristic  to  be  emphasized  is  the 
Christian  intolerance  toward  other  religions.  This  intol- 
erance the  Christian  shared  with  the  Jew;  but  there  re- 
mained a  great  difference  between  their  standpoints. 
Judaism  was  a  national  religion  and  was  treated  by  the 
Roman  statesman  with  somewhat  the  same  wise  tolerance 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  227 

with  which  he  treated  other  national  cults  and  reUgions; 
but  Christianity  was  a  new  sect  and  its  unwilUngness  to 
conform  to  the  few  simple  requirements  of  the  state  religion 
could  be  interpreted  only  as  the  maddest  obstinacy  and 
as  downright  treason.  A  different  hostility  arose  against 
Christianity  on  the  part  of  the  masses.  It  denied  their 
gods  and  it  denounced  their  circus;  and  they  in  turn  classed 
it  together  with  Epicureanism  and  Judaism  as  atheism. 
But  the  intolerance  of  the  Christian  is  important  to 
explain  not  only  the  persecutions  in  an  age  of  great  reli- 
gious tolerance  but  also  the  very  survival  of  Christianity. 
Like  all  men  of  these  days  the  Christian  believed  in  higher 
powers,  or  demons;  but  he  identified  the  gods  of  the  Gen- 
tiles with  the  evil  demons  with  whom  he  could  have  no 
relations  without  peril  to  his  salvation  and  with  the  very 
superhuman  powers  that  had  crucified  his  Lord  and  against 
whom  he  had  to  fight.  Moreover,  his  intolerance  inspired 
his  remarkable  missionary  spirit  which  was  almost  invis- 
ibly carrying  Christianity  into  all  lands  and  even  into 
Caesar's  household.  In  other  words,  had  the  early  Chris- 
tian compromised  with  the  many  religious  movements  and 
cults  of  his  day,  the  tremendous  forces  that  did  indeed 
transform  and  obliterate  many  elements  of  the  original 
faith  and  practice,  would  have  made  Christianity  disap- 
pear altogether  in  the  general  religion  of  the  Greco-Roman 
world,  instead  of  keeping  it  in  marked  relief  as  a  new  power 
within  the  Mediterranean  religion. 

2.  The  development  of  Christian  philosophy.^ — We 
have  seen  that  at  first  Christians  felt  no  need  for  a  specula- 

^  Among  the  prominent  Christian  philosophers,  or  fathers  of  the 
Church,  the  following  have  especially  contributed  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  ancient  Christian  philosophy,  or  have  through  their 
writings  especially  influenced  later  Christian  thought  in  the  West: 
Justin  Martyr  (fl.  c.  140);  Irenseus  {fl.  c.  175);  Tertullian  {fl.  c.  200); 
Clement  of  Alexandria  {fl.  c.  195);  Origen  (fl.  c.  225);  Cyprian  (fl.  c. 
250);Eusebius  (fl.  c.  300);  Athanasius  (fl.  c.  335);  Basil  (fl.  c.  370); 


228      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tive,  or  reflective  philosophical  formulation  of  their  re- 
ligious principles.  Rather  they  felt  not  only  content  with 
the  popular  philosophy  which  they  possessed  as  children 
of  their  age  but  also  distrustful  of  the  culture  of  the  learned 
classes.  Further,  we  have  seen  that  the  need  for  philoso- 
phy arose  only  gradually  and  was  first  markedly  present 
in  the  third  century,  and  was  due  to  the  following  circum- 
stances:— First,  Christianity  had  to  be  defended  before 
the  court  of  the  ruling  and  cultured  classes;  second,  the 
Apostolic  tradition  had  to  be  defined  and  defended  against 
novel  or  extraneous  doctrines,  called  heresies;  third,  men 
trained  in  the  philosophical  schools  were  beginning  to 
appear  among  the  converts  to  Christianity  and  in  becom- 
ing Christians  these  men  continued  the  ''way  of  life"  of 
the  philosopher;  finally,  the  mere  fact  that  the  Christian 
Church  included  men  of  high  intellectual  endowment  and 
that  the  great  Christian  centers  of  the  Mediterranean 
world  were  highly  enlightened  and  philosophically  stimu- 
lating made  it  impossible  to  keep  Christianity  merely  a 
religion  and  not  also  a  theology. 

In  other  words  and  expressed  at  greater  length:  the 
apostolic  tradition  had  to  be  kept  intact  against  the  en- 
croachment of  the  many  foreign  religious  and  philosophical 
influences  which  from  the  beginning  threatened  to  over- 
whelm it;  and  yet  no  man  could  live  in  the  Greco-Roman 
world  and  not  be  immersed  in  Hellenistic  and  Oriental 
thought  and  rehgion.  Hence  there  were  heresies  both 
without  and  within  the  church  which  had  to  be  combatted. 
Moreover,  the  church  had  to  define  and  systematize  her 
doctrines  for  the  instruction  of  her  own  people  especially 
along  those  lines  where,  because  of  the  thought  of  the  day, 
her  children  were  most  liable  to  be  led  astray.    In  particu- 

Gregory  of  Nyssa  {fl.  c.  370);  Gregory  of  Nazianzus  {fi.  c.  370); 
Ambrose  {fl.  c.  380);  Jerome  (fl.  c.  380);  Augustine  {fl.  c.  400);  Greg- 
ory the  Great  {fl.  c.  580). 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  229 

lar,  the  church  was  compelled  to  define  her  peculiar  doc- 
trine of  the  nature  of  the  redeemer,  the  incarnate  God, 
and  to  identify  Him  with  the  ultimate  God;  for  this  was  a 
doctrine  that  seemed  to  the  Hellenistic  philosopher  an 
absurdity  and  to  the  Hellenistic  mystic  a  religious  back- 
sliding. This  doctrine  was  finally  declared  to  be  of  the 
orthodox  faith  at  the  great  council  of  Nicea  in  325.  In 
later  councils  the  church  defined  also  the  twofold  nature 
of  Christ  by  declaring  Him  to  be  very  God  and  very  man, 
two  complete  natures  in  the  one  person.  To  complete  her 
doctrine  she  had  also  to  declare  her  own  nature  and  mis- 
sion in  the  world  and  to  define  the  means  of  the  soul's 
salvation.  This  she  did  by  teaching  man's  complete  fall 
from  his  original  state  and  his  present  utter  helplessness 
to  save  himself  by  his  own  efforts.  His  only  method  of 
salvation  is  through  God's  grace  and  the  church's  sacra- 
ments. The  church  is  thus  the  divine  agent  God  has  sent 
into  the  world  and  the  only  means  through  which  man  can 
be  saved.  The  church  is  the  city  of  God  that  is  above 
the  earthly  city,  the  ultimate  vice-gerent  of  God  in  whose 
hands  are  the  keys  of  hell  and  heaven. 

The  first  movement  within  and  without  the  Church 
against  which  the  Christian  thinker  was  forced  to  contend 
was  the  religion  called  Gnosticism.  Gnosticism  was  an 
older  reUgion  than  Christianity,  of  Persian  origin  with 
Hellenistic  additions.  It  shared  with  the  other  religious 
movements  of  the  periods  the  chief  characteristics  of  Hel- 
lenistic reUgion  and  therefore  shared  these  with  Chris- 
tianity also.  There  was  the  longing  for  redemption,  the 
tendency  toward  asceticism,  the  belief  in  the  fall  of  man, 
the  undervaluing  of  science  and  the  overvaluing  of  the 
super-rational,  and  finally  the  expressed  need  for  revela- 
tion, sacraments,  initiations,  magic  and  allegory.  As 
distinct  from  Christianity  Gnosticism  tended,  as  a  Persian 
religion,  to  be  strongly  dualistic,  that  is,  to  beheve  that  two 


230      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

principles,  the  good  and  the  evil,  are  at  work  in  the  world ; 
and  as  distinct  from  Christianity  it  tended  to  dissociate 
its  scheme  of  redemption  from  the  historic  Christ  and  to 
associate  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  with  the  evil  god 
rather  than  with  the  good  god.  That  is  to  say,  it  under- 
valued the  historic  teaching  of  Jesus  and  valued  highly 
that  of  St.  Paul  and  it  undervalued  the  Jewish  scriptures 
and  religion.  It  differed  from  Christianity  also,  we  should 
add,  by  tending  to  remain  many  dissociated  free  sects 
rather  than  to  become  an  organized  church.  Gnosticism 
reached  its  greatest  strength  in  the  first  and  second  cen- 
turies and  therefore  it  was  at  that  time  that  the  Christian 
church  was  most  imperilled  by  the  Gnostic  influence. 
Fortunately,  however,  its  influence  was  in  part  negative 
causing  a  movement  among  the  orthodox  Christians  in 
the  opposite  direction  from  that  in  which  it  tended.  That 
is,  the  Jewish  scriptures  were  valued  all  the  higher,  the 
life  and  teaching  of  the  historic  Jesus  were  emphasized 
all  the  more,  the  Apostolic  writings  were  segregated  and 
became  canonical  and  the  Apostolic  tradition  was  kept 
authoritative.  Finally,  the  Church  became  more  centrally 
and  thoroughly  organized  and  its  teaching  became  con- 
trolled by  authority.  But  the  influence  of  Gnosticism  on 
Christianity  was  also  positive  and  direct.^  That  is,  it 
influenced  Christianity  positively  by  emphasizing  the 
sacramental,  the  fall,  the  use  of  allegorical  interpretation, 
the  ascetic  life  and  other  beliefs  and  customs  prominent  in 
later  Christianity.^ 

^  This  positive  influence  accounts  in  part  for  the  marked  difference 
to  this  day  between  eastern  and  western  Christianity. 

2  In  the  struggle  to  become  the  universal,  or  Roman  religion, 
Christianity  had  later  two  other  powerful  and  most  important  rivals 
in  the  two  Iranian  reUgions,  Mithraism  and  Manichseism.  These 
two  religions  also  are  quite  characteristic  of  the  religious  tendencies 
of  the  age.  For  a  brief  account  of  them  read  the  articles  Mithras 
and  Manichaeism  in  the  Encyclop.  Brit.,  11th  ed. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  231 

The  foregoing  paragraphs  will  help  us  to  understand  also 
the  relation  of  the  Christian  thinkers  to  Neoplatonism. 
This  relation  is  most  clearly  expressed  by  saying  that  the 
two  rival  philosophies  were  sisters,  the  offspring  of  the 
same  parents,  the  Pythagorean,  Platonic  and  Hellenistic 
philosophies,  and  that  they  were  both  the  result  of  the 
same  general  intellectual  environment.  To  the  Neo- 
platonist  the  Christian  thinker  was  a  man  who  had  spoiled 
Greek  philosophy  by  adding  absurdities  to  it.  In  the  words 
of  Porphyry  quoted  by  Harnack,  the  life  of  Origen,  the 
great  Alexandrian  Christian  thinker  of  the  third  century, 
was  outwardly  "that  of  a  Christian  and  contrary  to  law; 
but,  as  far  as  his  views  of  things  and  of  God  are  concerned 
he  thought  like  the  Greeks,  whose  conceptions  he  overlaid 
with  foreign  myths."  In  return,  the  Christian  thinkers 
accused  the  pagan  philosophers  of  having  borrowed  their 
most  important  doctrines  and  notions  from  the  sacred 
writers  of  the  Church.  And  the  important  point  for  us 
to  notice  is  their  mutual  recognition  of  near  relation- 
ship. 

Let  us  consider  the  common  doctrines  that  make  both 
philosophies  typical  of  their  age.  In  the  words  of  Harnack, 
they  both  set  out  from  the  felt  need  of  redemption,  they 
both  sought  to  deliver  the  soul  from  sensuality  and  they 
both  recognized  man's  inability  without  divine  aid — with- 
out a  revelation — to  attain  salvation  and  a  sure  knowledge 
of  the  truth.  From  the  fourth  century  the  many  common 
elements  of  the  two  philosophies  played  a  marked  r61e 
in  Christian  thinking  and  really  made  the  two  philosophies 
one  except  on  the  doctrines  of  the  incarnation,  the  resur- 
rection of  the  flesh  and  the  creation  of  the  world  in  time. 
"If  a  book  does  not  happen  to  touch  on  any  of  the  above- 
mentioned  doctrines,  it  may  often  be  doubtful  whether 
the  writer  is  a  Christian  or  a  Neoplatonist.  In  ethical 
precepts,  in  directions  for  right  living  (that  is,  asceticism), 


232      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  two  systems  approximate  more  and  more  closely. 
But  it  was  here  that  Neoplatonism  finally  celebrated  its 
greatest  triumph.  It  indoctrinated  the  church  with  all 
its  mysticism,  its  mystic  exercises  and  even  its  magical 
cultus  as  taught  by  lamblichus.  The  works  of  the  pseudo- 
Dionysius  contain  a  gnosis  in  which,  by  means  of  the 
teaching  of  lamblichus  and  Proclus,  the  church's  theology 
is  turned  into  a  scholastic  mysticism  with  directions  on 
matters  of  practice  and  ritual.  And  as  these  writings  were 
attributed  to  Dionysius,  the  disciple  of  the  apostles,  the 
scholastic  mysticism  which  they  unfold  was  regarded  as 
an  apostolic,  not  to  say  a  divine,  science.  The  influence 
exercised  by  these  writings,  first  on  the  East,  and  then — 
after  the  9th  (or  12th)  century — on  the  West,  cannot  be 
overestimated." 

For  further  study  read: 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  arts.  Christianity,  Church  History, 

and  Gnosticism; 
Glover,  T.  R.,  Conflict  of  Religions  in  the  Early  Roman 

Empire,  3d  ed.,  1909; 
Paulsen,  F.  (Thilly  transl.),  System  of  Ethics,  1899,  65-115. 
For  more  extensive  studij  read: 

Wernle,  P.,  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  1903; 

McGiflfert,  A.  C,  The  Apostolic  Age,  1900; 

Harnack,  A.,  The  Expansion  of  Christianity  in  the  First 

Three  Centuries,  1904; 
Ramsay,  W.  M.,  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  1893; 
Dill,  S.,  Roman  Society  in  the  Last  Century  of  the  Western 

Empire; 
Hatch,  E.,  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon 

the  Christian  Church,  1890  (Hibbert  Lectures); 
Pliny  the  Younger  (Firth  transl.),  Letters  (Camelot  Series); 
Gwatkin,  H.  M.,  Selections  from  Early  Writers  Illustrative 

of  Church  History; 
Glover,  T.  R.,  Life  and  Letters  in  the  Fourth  Century,  1902; 
Harnack,  A.,  History  of  Dogma,  1899; 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  233 

Dunning,  History  of  Political  Theories,  152-160; 
Cambridge  Medieval  History,  Vol.  I,  chapters  IV,  V,  VI  and 
XVIII. 

3.  Augustine. — Ancient  Christian  philosophy  reached 
its  final  stage  in  the  West  in  the  writings  of  the  great 
thinker  St.  Augustine,^  bishop  of  Hippo  in  Africa.  The 
transcendent  God  of  Neoplatonism  is  the  accepted  belief 
of  this  theologian.  "God  is  an  eternal,  transcendent 
being,  all-powerful,  all-good,  all-wise;  absolute  unity,  ab- 
solute intelligence,  and  absolute  will;  that  is,  absolute 
spirit.  He  is  absolutely  free,  but  His  decisions  are  as  un- 
changeable as  His  nature;  He  is  absolutely  holy  and  can- 
not will  evil.  In  Him  willing  and  doing  are  one ;  what  He 
wills  is  done  without  the  help  of  any  intermediate  being 
or  logos.  In  Him  are  all  ideas  or  forms  of  things;  which 
means  that  He  proceeded  rationally  in  creating  the  world 
and  that  everything  owes  its  form  to  Him."  ^  But  the 
world  is  not  a  mere  evolution  from  God  as  the  Neo- 
platonist  teaches.  God  created  the  world  out  of  nothing. 
That  is,  God  is  not  only  super-rational  he  is  also  super- 
natural.    Though  the  world  depends  upon  him  for  its 

1  Fl.  c.  400.  He  was  at  one  time  a  Manichsean  from  whose  dualism 
he  was  converted  to  Neoplatonism.  Finally,  he  was  converted  to 
Christianity  through  the  preaching  of  Ambrose,  bishop  of  Milan. 
The  influence  of  the  earher  philosophical  behefs  of  Augustine  remain 
evident  in  his  thought  throughout  his  later  writings.  Augustine  was 
both  a  general  philosopher  and  a  Christian  philosopher;  and  the  two 
philosophies  are  far  from  being  in  harmony.  In  this  section  we  are 
studying  him  solely  as  the  latter,  that  is,  as  the  thinker  who  gave  the 
medieval  western  church  her  greatest  treatises  on  dogma  and  who 
has  been  to  this  day  the  most  influential  theologian  in  the  West. 
As  a  general  philosopher  Augustine  was  virtually  without  influence 
until  modem  days  when  what  Windelband  happily  calls  his  meta- 
physics of  inner  experience,  plays  an  important  part  in  the  struggle 
against  both  Aristotelianism  and  Neoplatonism  and  leads  on  to  a 
doctrine  known  in  modem  philosophy  by  the  name,  idealism. 

2  Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  149. 


234      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

existence  and  though  its  continued  existence  is  a  continu- 
ous creation,  God  and  nature  are  absolutely  distinct. 
Again  the  very  process  of  creation  itself  is  above  both 
reason  and  nature.  Creation  is  not  an  event  in  time  or 
space  but  logically  prior  to  both;  for  both  time  and  space 
are  themselves  creatures  of  God.  Here,  however,  ortho- 
doxy compels  Augustine  to  add,  the  world  is  not  eternal 
but  had  a  beginning  as  have  all  its  particular  objects.^ 
Finally,  God  created  not  of  necessity  but  out  of  love. 
Creation  was  an  act  of  free  will. 

Against  Manichaeism,  or  the  Persian  belief  in  the  two 
ultimate  principles  good  and  evil,  spirit  and  matter, 
Augustine  taught  that  God  created  matter.  All  is  from 
God.  But  whence  then  came  evil?  If  the  world  is  entirely 
from  God  it  must  be  perfect  and  good.  The  answer  is 
characteristic  of  the  late  Greek  philosophy.  Evil  is  neces- 
sary to  the  perfection  of  the  world,  as  the  shadows  are 
necessary  to  the  beauty  of  the  painting,  statue  or  land- 
scape. Moreover,  evil  is  not  a  distinct  stuff  over  and  above 
the  good,  for  evil  is  a  mere  absence  of  the  good  as  the 
shadow  is  the  mere  absence  of  light.  It  is  an  absence  of 
being,  or  form  in  that  which  might  have  had  being.  Even 
so,  is  not  God  the  source  of  this  shortcoming?  Augustine 
replies:  No.  The  source  is  the  free  will  of  God's  creatures. 
He  gave  them  free  wills  and  in  so  doing  made  them  of  a 
higher  nature  than  they  would  have  been  as  mere  passive 
agents  of  His  will.  With  their  free  wills  they  could  either 
turn  toward  God  or  turn  from  Him.  Evil  has  come  from 
the  fact  that  they  have  chosen  to  turn  away  from  Him 
and  from  the  fact  that  in  so  doing  they  lost  Him  and  there- 
fore have  lost  the  good.    In  short,  man's  free  will  is  the 

^  But  as  time  is  itself  created,  this  beginning  of  the  world  must 
be  a  merely  logical  and  not  a  temporal  beginning.  A  temporal  be- 
ginning of  the  world  was  and  has  remained  an  embarrassing  dogma 
of  the  Church  to  the  Christian  philosophers. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  235 

source  of  man's  imperfection,  but  man  was  capable  of 
being  perfect.  Man,  not  God,  is  responsible;  and  he  is  so, 
even  if  God  foresaw  that  free  man  would  sin. 

Man  has  fallen,  and  with  man's  fall  evil  has  entered  the 
world.  Notice,  man  has  fallen,  not  men.^  In  Adam  all 
men  sinned.  In  short,  Adam's  sin  was  not  a  mere  event 
in  the  life  of  one  man  but  was  a  cosmical  revolution,  a 
world  rebelling  against  its  creator.  With  the  fall  man  was 
lost.  Here  another  essential  doctrine  of  Pauline  Chris- 
tianity is  philosophically  founded.  Man  is  lost  and  through 
no  power  of  man  can  man  be  saved.  Left  to  himself  man 
can  but  sin,  for  his  true  freedom  has  gone.  God  alone 
can  save  man  by  His  grace.  Man  must  be  redeemed  and 
God  alone  can  redeem  him.  As  we  have  seen,  this  was  an 
age  that  had  lost  confidence  in  what  man's  efforts  can  do. 
His  case  is  hopeless  unless  help  come  to  him  from  beyond 
the  world.  But  how  is  this  help  to  come?  Are  all  men  to 
be  saved  and  is  the  world  to  be  restored  to  its  original 
perfection?  Evidently,  the  hard  facts  of  life  prove  that 
this  is  not  so.  The  world  is  evil  and  is  lost;  men  are  evil 
still  hundreds  of  years  after  the  Christ  has  come.  Such 
is  not  God's  salvation.  Rather  God  saves  not  man  but 
men.  He  chooses  whom  he  shall  save  and  whom  He 
shall  leave  to  their  sin.  But  is  not  salvation  free  to  all  to 
choose  or  not  to  choose?  No;  man  cannot  even  choose  to 
be  saved,  for  man  is  hopelessly  corrupt.  If  he  is  saved, 
God  does  all.  The  agent  by  which  this  salvation  is  con- 
summated is  the  grace  of  God  working  through  the  Church 
and  her  sacraments.     Without  the  church  there  is  no 

*  That  the  fall  is  the  fall  of  each  man  was  the  doctrine  of  the  Pela- 
gian heresy  against  which  Augustine  fought  for  years.  Indeed  it  was 
essential  to  the  Church's  doctrine  of  redemption  that  mankind  as  a 
whole  should  be  faUen  and  that,  for  example,  the  future  man  should 
be  saved  through  Christ's  sacrifice  as  well  as  the  sinful  men  of  the 
past. 


236      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

means  of  salvation.  Thus  the  church  is  conceived  not  as 
a  society  within  the  world  but  as  a  wonderful  cosmical 
entity  coming  from  God  and  supreme  over  the  destiny  of 
man.  It  is  thus  superior  to  the  state  and  to  all  other 
human  institutions  and  enterprises.  It  is  the  City  of  God 
descended  from  heaven.  The  church  and  the  angels 
constitute  the  great  intermediary  between  the  ultimate 
God  and  the  cosmos;  and  they  thus  correspond  to  the 
intermediary  powers  and  stages  believed  in  by  the  whole 
intellectual  world  of  the  Greco-Roman  period. 

For  further  study  read: 

McCabe,  J.,  Saint  Augustine  and  His  Age,  1903; 
Augustine,  The  City  of  God  [especially  Books  I,  VII,  X, 

(IX  in  the  Temple  Classics  edition)  XII  (XI),  XVIII 

(XIV),  XXI-XXII  (XVII-XVIII)l; 
Augustine,  Confessions; 
Cambridge  Medieval  History,  Vol.  I,  chapter  XX. 

4.  Gregory  the  Great. — We  may  pass  at  once  from 
Augustine  to  the  great  pope  Gregory.  The  further  deca- 
dence is  marked.  "Gregory's  mind  was  less  antique,  and 
more  barbarous  and  medieval  than  Augustine's,  whose 
doctrine  he  reproduced  with  garbling  changes  of  tone  and 
emphasis.  In  the  century  and  a  half  between  the  two  the 
Roman  institutions  had  broken  down,  decadence  had 
advanced,  and  the  patristic  mind  had  passed  from  indif- 
ference to  the  laws  of  physical  phenomena  to  something 
like  sheer  barbaric  ignorance  of  the  same.  Whatever  in 
Ambrose,  Jerome,  or  Augustine  represented  conviction  or 
opinion,  has  in  Gregory  become  mental  habit,  spontaneity 
of  acceptance,  matter  of  course.  The  miraculous  is  with 
him  a  frame  of  mind ;  and  the  allegorical  method  of  under- 
standing Scripture  is  no  longer  intended,  not  to  say  wilful, 
as  with  Augustine,  but  has  become  persistent  unconscious 
habit.    Augustine  desired  to  know  God  and  the  Soul,  and 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  237 

the  true  Christian  doctrine  with  whatever  made  for  its 
substantiation.  He  is  conscious  of  closing  his  mind  to 
everything  irrelevant  to  this.  Gregory's  nature  has  settled 
itself  within  this  scheme  of  Christian  knowledge  which 
Augustine  framed.  He  has  no  intellectual  inclinations 
reaching  out  beyond.  He  is  not  conscious  of  closing  his 
mind  to  extraneous  knowledge.  His  mental  habits  and 
temperament  are  so  perfectly  adjusted  to  the  confines 
of  this  circle,  that  all  beyond  has  ceased  to  exist  for 
him. 

"So  with  Gregory  the  patristic  limitation  of  intellectual 
interest,  indifference  to  physical  phenomena,  and  accep- 
tance of  the  miraculous  are  no  longer  merely  thoughts  and 
opinions  consciously  entertained;  they  make  part  of  his 
nature.  .  .  .  Gregory  represents  the  patristic  mind  pass- 
ing into  a  mere  barbarous  stage.  He  dehghted  in  miracles, 
and  wrote  his  famous  Dialogues  on  the  Lives  and  Miracles 
of  the  Italian  Saints  to  solace  the  cares  of  his  pontificate. 
The  work  exhibits  a  naive  acceptance  of  every  kind  of 
miracle,  and  presents  the  supple  medieval  devil  in  all  his 
deceitful  metamorphoses."  ^  Another  feature  of  the  com- 
plete decadence  exhibited  in  Gregory  is  his  doctrine  of 
penitence  and  penance.  "Our  whole  life  should  be  one 
long  penitence  and  penance,  and  baptism  of  tears;  for  our 
first  baptism  cannot  wash  out  later  sins,  and  cannot  be 
repeated." 

5.  Conclusion. — Here  we  have  come  to  the  end  of 
ancient  thought.  In  Gregory  the  theologian  and  in  the 
late  Neoplatonists  the  ancient  Mediterranean  philosophy 
has  reached  its  last  stage.  An  older  civilization  is  dying, 
and  her  philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of  despair  and  of 
fatigue,  the  philosophy  of  old  age  and  of  death.  The 
pride  and  effort  of  man  and  of  his  intellect  have  ended  in 
defeat.  Man  can  do  nothing.  His  institutions  and  his 
1  Taylor,  Medieval  Mind,  pp.  98  ff. 


238      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

science,  all  of  his  volitional  life  in  history  and  all  of  his 
struggle  to  conquer  the  world  by  his  skill  and  to  make  it 
the  ideal  earthly  city  have  been  vain.  Only  in  another, 
a  higher  world  can  man's  hopes  be  realized.  This  lower 
world  is  not  the  stage  in  which  man  works  out  his  true 
destiny  but  is  rather  the  tomb  from  which  man  is  to  be 
rescued.  The  ideal  earthly  life  of  man  is  to  labor  to  escape 
from  the  lower  world  and  from  the  flesh,  and  to  deliver 
his  soul  by  penitence,  fasting  and  prayer  and  by  God's 
grace  from  its  earthly  dwelling,  the  body  with  its  lusts. 
Nothing  on  earth  is  fundamentally  important  except  this 
escape.  Man's  true  interests  are  elsewhere;  and  the  highest 
life  he  can  lead  is  one  devoted  to  contemplating  the  world 
beyond  this  world.  The  good  is  not  as  the  old  Greeks 
thought  wisdom  and  beauty,  but  the  super-rational  vision 
of  heaven,  the  ecstasy  of  divine  intoxication,  the  mystical 
union  with  God. 

What  a  contrast  if  we  compare  this  age  with  that  of 
Athens  in  the  days  of  Pericles!  What  a  contrast  indeed 
if  we  compare  the  philosophy  of  this  age  with  the  thought 
of  men,  with  the  energy  of  men,  with  the  hope  of  men  and 
with  the  religion  of  men  during  the  past  four  centuries  in 
our  modern  world !  For  again  we  shall  see  the  philosophy 
of  youth  and  young  manhood.  Again  we  shall  see  man 
struggling  from  primitive  thought  to  science.  Again  we 
shall  see  the  philosophy  of  the  rational  life,  of  enlighten- 
ment, assert  itself  against  the  philosophy  of  mysticism 
and  hypnosis.  But  in  saying  this  let  us  beware  of  youth's 
error,  for  life  contains  both  youth  and  old  age  and  old  age 
has  its  vision  as  truly  as  has  youth.  As  a  youth  man  must 
struggle  to  know  the  world  and  to  master  the  world  and 
to  make  the  world  the  ideal  home  for  his  highest  life; 
but  in  old  age  the  world  conquers  man  and  man  faces  the 
defeats  and  failures  of  his  life  and  the  vast  realm  of  the 
unknown  which  his  science  has  not  yet  been  able  to  reveal 


THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  239 

to  him.  Thus  there  are  two  sides  to  Ufe.  There  is  the 
struggle  to  conquer  and  to  know;  hence,  intellectualism 
and  the  philosophy  of  the  enlightenment :  and  there  is  the 
sense  of  failure  and  the  presence  of  the  unknown;  hence 
mysticism  and  the  philosophy  of  the  super-rational. 


PART  III 
MODERN  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE    ATLANTIC    PERIOD 

1.  Introductory. — There  have  been,  as  explained  in  an 
earUer  chapter,  three  major  epochs  in  the  history  of  west- 
ern civihzation,  the  River  Period,  the  Mediterranean 
Period  and  the  Present,  or  Atlantic  Period.  The  River 
civilization  expanded  into  the  Mediterranean  civilization 
and  continued  as  a  part  of  the  wider  culture;  and  in  turn 
the  Mediterranean  civilization  expanded  into  the  Atlantic 
civilization  and  became  a  part  of  this  still  more  extensive 
culture.  The  age  of  transition,  from  the  Mediterranean 
period  to  the  Atlantic,  lasting  from  five  to  ten  centuries, 
is  usually  called  the  Middle  Ages  and  in  contrast  to  these 
centuries  the  last  five  or  six  centuries  are  called  the  Modern 
Age.  However,  the  student  of  history  does  well  not  to 
make  many  subdivisions  and  not  to  make  sharp  the  boun- 
daries between  periods.  History  has  too  much  continuity 
to  be  divided  thus  into  discrete  parts.  Indeed,  it  is  proper 
to  begin  a  history  of  the  middle  ages  back  in  the  fourth 
century  in  the  time  of  Constantino  and  in  contrast  it  is 
proper  to  say  that  ancient  or  Mediterranean  history  con- 
tinued to  modern  times  in  parts  of  the  Mediterranean 
basin  and  the  near  Orient.  Thus  the  term,  the  middle 
ages,  is  decidedly  ambiguous  and  misleading  unless  the 
student  is  warned  to  use  it  cautiously.  It  denotes  the 
childhood  of  the  Atlantic  period,  the  time  during  which 
the  northern  peoples  of  Europe  were  invading  and  settling 
in  the  western  half  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  were  break- 
ing down  in  part  the  older  culture  and  institutions  of  the 

243 


244      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

empire  and  the  time  during  which  the  modern  nations  of 
northern,  western  and  southwestern  Europe  were  arising 
out  of  the  poUtical  and  social  confusion  resulting  from  the 
breakdown  of  the  older  order. 

The  extent  of  this  breakdown  was  unequal  in  different 
parts  of  the  western  empire,  depending  upon  the  degree 
to  which  these  parts  had  been  originally  romanized  and 
upon  the  extent  to  which  the  invaders  destroyed  the  older 
culture  and  superseded  it  with  their  own  customs.  The 
most  evident  instance  of  this  difference  in  breakdown  of 
the  old  and  introduction  of  the  new  cultural  factors  is  to 
be  seen  in  the  languages  of  modern  Europe.  In  Italy, 
Spain  and  France  the  Latin  language  was  able  to  triumph 
over  the  tongues  of  the  invaders  and  to  give  these  nations 
Romance  languages ;  whereas  in  Great  Britian  and  Central 
Europe  the  Germanic  languages  dominated.  However, 
more  important  than  the  extent  to  which  language  sur- 
vived, was  the  extent  to  which  the  older  culture  survived 
in  the  different  lands.  In  Italy  the  survival  was  greatest; 
for  Italy,  in  spite  of  invasion  and  political  upheaval  and 
confusion,  remained  essentially  Italian  in  culture.  Italy 
had,  it  is  true,  a  dark  period,  a  period  when  the  light  of 
art,  literature  and  intellectual  life  was  dim;  but  this  period 
was  relatively  short.  Next  to  Italy  in  these  respects  comes 
southern  France.  Southern  France  had  been  thoroughly 
romanized  and  remained  throughout  the  middle  ages  in 
close  relation  to  Italy  and  to  Italian  culture.  Spain  and 
northern  France  come  next  in  this  order,  and  finally  Great 
Britain  and  Central  Europe  come  last.  Indeed,  what 
Great  Britain  and  Central  Europe  formerly  had  of  Medi- 
terranean culture  was  lost  and  what  they  afterward  ac- 
quired was  brought  to  them  through  Italy  and  France. 

2.  The  development  of  medieval  and  modern  culture. 
— The  darkest  days  intellectually  were  the  five  centuries 
from  500  to  1000.     In  the  eleventh  century  learning  again 


THE  ATLANTIC  PERIOD  246 

began  to  advance;  and  during  the  two  centuries  from  1000 
to  1200  western  Europe  was  eagerly  studying  and  master- 
ing what  remained  accessible  of  the  older  Mediterranean 
culture.  These  seven  centuries,  especially  the  four  cen- 
turies from  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Great,  are  ap- 
propriately called  the  elementary  school  days  of  mod- 
ern Europe;  for  in  these  days  the  thinkers  of  the  new  age 
studied  the  culture  of  the  old  age  with  the  faith,  the  sub- 
mission and  the  docility  of  childhood.  That  is  to  say,  a 
barbarous  Europe  had  first  to  master  the  higher  culture 
of  the  Mediterranean  world  before  it  could  even  criticise 
that  culture,  before  it  could  begin  to  think  and  to  explore 
by  itself,  and  before  its  own  genius  could  rebel  against  the 
schoolmaster  and  his  essentially  foreign  doctrines.  The 
wonderful  thirteenth  century  marks  a  transition  in  this 
development.  The  self-confidence  and  the  self-assertion 
of  youth  appear  and,  excepting  interruptions  due  to  war 
and  tumult,  continue  to  increase  until  modern  Europe 
reaches  full  manhood  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries.  That  is,  the  centuries  from  1200  to  1600  may 
be  appropriately  called  the  youth  and  adolescence  of  the 
Atlantic  period.  In  these  four  centuries  Europe  masters 
the  lessons  of  her  ancient  instructors,  begins  to  think  for 
herself  and  to  criticise  what  she  has  learned,  and  enters 
upon  the  most  remarkable  period  of  independent  discovery 
that  man  has  ever  known.  The  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  may  be  properly  called  the  Age  of 
Discovery,  not  because  discovery  or  even  revolutionary 
discovery  ceased  after  1700  but  because  these  three  cen- 
turies witnessed  those  discoveries  which  emancipated 
the  modern  mind  from  Mediterranean  culture  and  started 
the  most  wonderful  scientific  epoch  in  the  history  of  man. 
From  1500  to  our  own  time  and  on  into  the  future,  how  far 
no  one  can  tell,  comes  the  manhood  of  the  Atlantic  period, 
the  Present  Age.    There  are  signs  of  its  shortly  (as  history 


246      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

counts  time)  merging  into  a  World  Age  in  which  the 
Oriental  peoples  will  play  as  important  a  part  as  the 
Occidental,  with  what  results  to  the  intellectual  and 
philosophical  development  of  man,  no  one  can  fore- 
tell. 

3.  The  culture  of  the  Atlantic  period  contrasted  with 
that  of  the  Mediterranean  period. — Let  us  at  once  con- 
trast the  culture  of  modern  Europe  with  that  of  the  Greco- 
Roman  world.  Genetically  the  culture  of  our  modern 
world  has  two  parents,  the  Mediterranean  culture  and  the 
native  northern  temperament  and  customs  which,  let  us 
not  forget,  are  as  old  in  their  origin  as  is  the  culture  of  the 
South.  Our  indebtedness  to  the  Mediterranean  culture, 
institutions  and  religion  is  enormous;  but  as  no  one  can 
tell  what  our  civilization  would  have  been  without  the 
schooling  of  Greece  and  Rome,  no  one  can  calculate  pre- 
cisely the  magnitude  of  this  indebtedness,  for  we  should 
include  in  the  sum  not  only  what  we  have  borrowed  di- 
rectly from  the  old  world  but  what  we  owe  to  the  stimulus 
given  to  the  northern  peoples  by  the  higher  culture,  what 
we  owe  thus  indirectly.  From  Rome  the  medieval  world 
learned  the  ideal  of  a  universal  society  of  men  as  against 
the  narrow,  provincial  or  tribal  ideal  of  the  barbarian. 
This  lesson  was  taught  in  three  greatest  of  traditions,  the 
Roman  Empire,  the  Roman  Church  and  the  Roman  Law. 
From  Greece,  partly  through  Rome  and  her  church,  and 
in  part  directly,  the  medieval  world  learned  her  first  and 
elementary  lessons  in  art,  in  science  and  in  philosophi- 
cal reflection.  And  from  Rome  she  received  her  ele- 
mentary lessons  in  jurisprudence.  More  in  detail,  modern 
astronomy,  mathematics,  physics,  biology,  medicine,  his- 
tory and  legal  science,  modern  art,  architecture,  literature 
and  religion  genuinely  continue  the  culture  of  the  ancient 
world,  even  though  the  changes  here  and  there  have  been 
vast  and  radical,  and  even  though  the  temperament  and 


THE  ATLANTIC  PERIOD  247 

the  philosophy  behind  the  development  have  been  funda- 
mentally different. 

But  what  do  we  moderns  owe  to  our  other  parent,  our 
northern  ancestor?  Surely  something,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
because  the  Mediterranean  never  ceased  to  be  a  foreign 
culture  and  therefore  never  could  become  completely 
dominant.  Perhaps  we  may  see  the  debt  clearest  in  its 
medieval  phenomena,  in  feudaUsm  and  chivalry,  in  the 
minnesinger,  in  the  saga  and  in  the  romantic  devotion 
and  love  of  the  saint,  in  the  Gothic  cathedral,  in  a  certain 
romantic  lawlessness  and  intolerance  manifested  toward 
restraint,  order  and  system,  and  in  love  of  wandering, 
adventure  and  daring.  The  northerner  is  not  hard-headed, 
is  not  fundamentally  intellectual,  is  not  a  lover  of  order  and 
form,  is  not  ''classic."  Rather  he  is  sentimental,  romantic, 
venturesome,  restless,  undisciplined  and  disorderly.  He 
loves  nature  and  nature  folk  on  sea  and  land.  He  loves 
mystery  and  the  boundless  world.  A  crusader  or  a  knight 
of  the  Holy  Grail,  a  Norse  pirate,  a  priest  devoting  his 
life  to  the  care  of  the  lepers  on  a  lonely  island,  a  St.  Eliza- 
beth distributing  bread  to  the  poor,  and  a  Rousseau  seem 
closer  and  more  of  kin  to  him  than  do  Pericles  and  Socrates, 
Sophocles  and  Plutarch,  or  any  other  great  Greek  or  Ro- 
man. 

Of  course,  this  is  in  part  and  of  necessity  an  exaggera- 
tion. On  the  one  hand,  the  Greeks  also  had  their  love  of 
mystery  and  adventure,  they  too  could  be  sentimental 
and  they  too  loved  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  north- 
erners have  their  astronomers  and  pure  mathematicians, 
their  periods  of  classic  art  and  Uterature  and  they  have 
hard-headed  naturalistic  philosophers.  Great  civilizations 
are  infinitely  complex;  and  it  is  probably  impossible  to 
point  out  an  element,  or  feature  in  one  that  cannot  be 
paralleled  by  a  like  element,  or  feature  in  the  others.  Still, 
though  the  differences  may  be  reducible  to  averages  and 


248      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

to  proportions,  the  differences  are  none  the  less  marked. 
Compare  the  Parthenon  with  a  Gothic  cathedral,  compare 
a  drama  of  Sophocles  with  a  drama  of  Shakespeare,  com- 
pare a  Greek  lyric  with  a  modern,  compare  a  Stoic  with 
an  intellectual  modern  Christian,  compare  the  Apology, 
Phsedo  and  Symposium  with  a  Kempis'  Imitation  of 
Christ,  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Newman's  Apologia 
or  Rousseau's  Confessions,  or  compare  Pericles'  funeral 
oration  with  what  we  should  expect  to  hear  said  on  a 
similar  occasion.  To  do  so  is  certainly  to  apprehend  a 
marked  difference. 

4.  Ancient  philosophy  contrasted  with  modem  philos- 
ophy.— In  particular  we  must  compare  ancient  philos- 
ophy with  modern.  The  basic  differences  are  two.  First, 
the  ancient  lived  in  a  closed,  finite  universe  with  the  earth 
at  the  center  surrounded  by  the  heavenly  world  of  the 
stars  and  of  God.  The  modern  lives  in  an  infinite,  or 
boundless  universe  with  its  countless  starry  worlds  of 
which  the  solar  system  is  but  one  and  that  astronomically 
insignificant.  The  ancient  lived  in  a  world  whose  form  and 
order  seemed  constant,  eternal  and  divine.  The  modern 
lives  in  a  world  whose  forms  and  orders  seem  fleeting, 
accidental  and  but  mere  samples  of  the  infinite  possibilities 
of  which  nature  is  capable.  The  ancient's  world  was 
relatively  simple,  the  modern's  world  is  infinitely  complex. 
Second,  the  ancient  philosopher,  at  least  when  he  was  not 
a  skeptic,  had  full  confidence  in  pure  thought;  and  there- 
fore the  fulfilhnent  of  the  work  of  science  seemed  to  him 
not  distant.  The  modern  philosopher  that  is  genuinely 
modern,  is  an  experimentalist  and  has  little  confidence  or 
interest  in  pure  thought.  He  feels  his  way  and  does  not 
expect  to  reach  any  permanent  goal.  He  values  facts  and 
distrusts  theories,  for  he  outgrows  theories  almost  as 
quickly  as  a  youngster  outgrows  his  clothes.  He  is  not  a 
skeptic,  far  from  that,  for  his  triumphs  have  been  too 


THE  ATLANTIC  PERIOD  249 

numerous.  Rather  his  confidence  m  research  is  complete. 
But  thinking  divorced  from  experimental  verification  seems 
either  untrustworthy  or  unprofitable.  System  and  gen- 
eralization he  has  to  have  or  his  facts  would  overwhelm 
him  by  their  very  number  and  confuse  him  by  their  vari- 
ety; but  system  and  generahzation  are  ever  changing  and 
growing  and  this  he  both  expects  and  welcomes.  In  the 
words  of  Professor  Dewey,  the  modern  thinker  lives  "in 
a  universe  with  the  lid  off."  In  such  a  universe  the  intel- 
lectual Greek  would  have  felt  confused  and  troubled,  but 
the  modern  thinker  feels  not  only  comfortable  but  enthusi- 
astic. It  is  all  a  grand  adventure  into  the  reahns  of  mys- 
tery. The  modern  thinker  is  confident  that  he  is  making 
excellent  progress  but  he  does  not  know  and  often  does 
not  much  care,  whither.  Greek  philosophy  offered  man 
a  conception  of  the  world  and  a  view  of  hfe.  Modern 
philosophy  offers  neither,  but  in  their  place  presents  us 
with  the  experimental  method  and  the  facts  of  evolution. 
This  again  is  of  course  an  exaggeration.  On  the  one 
hand,  philosophies  of  the  world  and  of  Hfe  are  numerous 
in  modern  days  and  many  thoughtful  men  accept  them 
with  confidence.  Many  thinkers  too  have  written  "final 
books"  and  have  offered  the  "last  word;"  and  pure 
thinkers  in  logic,  mathematics  and  mathematical  physics 
have  given  us  immortal  treatises.  On  the  other  hand, 
experimental  science  existed  among  the  Greeks,  as  we  have 
seen,  and  many  Greeks  were  mystics.  Still,  the  foregoing 
contrast  is  justified.  The  Greeks  were  logicians,  intel- 
lectualists  and  rationalistic  philosophers;  the  moderns  are 
experimentalists,  pragmatists,  sentimentaHsts  and  roman- 
ticists. 


CHAPTER  XX 

MEDIEVAL   THOUGHT 

1.  The  medieval  mind. — In  this  chapter  we  are  to 
study  the  chief  features  of  European  thought  from  the 
fifth  century  to  the  fifteenth,  that  is,  during  the  period 
called  the  middle  ages.  The  preceding  chapter  has  pointed 
out  that  during  this  time  modern  Europe  is  at  elementary 
school  and  is  therefore  learning  uncritically  rather  than 
investigating  experimentally  and  thinking  independently. 
In  the  earlier  part  of  the  period  the  pupil  is  utterly  docile 
and  humbly  and  obediently  studies  the  fragmentary  and 
decadent  wisdom  transmitted  to  him  from  the  older  cul- 
ture by  compilers  of  text-books.^  The  pupil's  own  writings 
are  correspondingly  childlike.  These  writings  are  at  the 
best  mere  compilations  in  which  he  selects  or  interprets 
what  his  ignorant  mind  can  discover  in  writings  he  does 
not  truly  appreciate  and  understand.    They  exhibit  an 

1  Prominent  among  these  text-books  and  other  writings  were  Boe- 
thius'  translation  of  Porphyry's  Introduction  to  Aristotle's  Catego- 
ries, and  of  parts  of  the  Aristotelian  Organon;  also  Boethius' 
commentaries;  Marcianus  Capella's  encyclopedia  of  the  sciences; 
Cassiodorus'  De  artibus  ac  disciplinis  liber  alium  litter  arum;  Isidore  of 
Seville's  Etymologies.  Later  Erigena's  translation  of  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite  (the  pseudo-Dionysius),  a  late  Christian  Neoplatonist. 
Besides  these  later  writings  there  were  especially  available  Plato's 
Timaeus,  parts  of  Cicero's  writings,  parts  of  those  of  Augustine  and 
other  western  Church  fathers,  especially  Ambrose,  Jerome  and  Hil- 
ary. In  general  it  is  to  be  said  that  it  is  easy  to  exaggerate  the  lack 
in  the  middle  ages  of  ancient  Roman  writings  and  those  of  the  great 
western  fathers.  The  knowledge  of  the  Greek  authors,  however, 
was  extremely  meagre. 

260 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  251 

immense  amoimt  of  merely  verbal  association  and  dispute 
with  little  sense  of  what  is  truly  important  and  with  little 
disposition  to  appeal  to  facts  and  reality  for  verification. 
Indeed,  almost  everything  belonging  to  the  intellectual 
world  is  settled  and  so  suggests  that  it  be  learned  and  not 
investigated. 

The  two  causes  of  this  extreme  docility  are  evident. 
In  the  first  place,  the  communities  where  the  older  culture 
persisted  were  decadent  and  therefore  conservative,  look- 
ing back  to  the  greater  glory  and  wisdom  of  the  past  as 
supremely  precious  and  excellent.  In  the  second  place, 
the  new  peoples  were  barbarians  coming  in  contact 
with  a  culture  that  though  decadent  still  transcended 
their  culture  and  filled  them  with  the  same  wonder 
and  feeling  of  hopeless  inferiority  exhibited  to-day 
by  ignorant  barbaric  peoples  in  the  presence  of  Euro- 
peans. 

If  we  turn  our  attention  from  the  mere  ignorance  and 
docility  of  Europe  in  these  centuries  to  the  more  positive 
traits,  two  characteristics  stand  in  relief.  If  the  Mediter- 
ranean world  back  even  in  the  fourth  century  was  becom- 
ing barbaric  again,  western  and  northern  Europe  was 
decidedly  barbaric  in  the  succeeding  centuries  of  political 
and  social  confusion.  In  short,  Europe  became  again 
pre-scientific  in  its  thought  and  in  many  of  its  customs. 
Men  believed  in  magic  and  in  frequently  occurring  mira- 
cles and  did  so  as  a  matter  of  course.  Men  were  animists 
and  beheved  in  a  world  about  them  populated  with  spirits 
and  demons,  a  world  in  which  Satan  appearing  in  many 
shapes  could  work  his  mischief  among  men.  It  was  an 
age  in  which  political,  social  and  religious  institutions 
were  not  sharply  distinguished  in  men's  thoughts  and 
customs,  in  which  law  and  religious  custom  were  largely 
interfused,  in  which  men's  religious  beHefs  and  traditions 
contained  interwoven  in  them  what  little  scientific  knowl- 


252      THE  HISTORY  OF  EXJROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

edge  they  possessed.  In  short,  poUtics,  science  and  the- 
ology formed  one  body  of  knowledge. 

A  second  positive  characteristic  stands  in  relief  and  is 
historically  most  important  because  it  exhibits  the  new 
element  that  the  northern  peoples  were  adding  to  Euro- 
pean thought  while  they  were  acquiring  the  southern 
culture.  That  is  to  say,  the  new  France,  England  and 
Germany  did  not  become  Mediterranean  in  culture  but 
developed  a  distinctly  new  culture  to  which  mdeed  the 
old  culture  of  Greece  and  Rome  contributed  but  to  which 
the  northern  peoples  themselves  genuinely  contributed. 
This  new  characteristic  was  emotional.  It  is  to  be  seen 
in  the  energy,  the  eagerness  and  the  intense  enthusiasm 
of  the  northerners.  It  is  to  be  seen  in  their  fear  and  terror 
and  in  their  love  and  gentleness  along  with  their  anger, 
violence  and  cruelty.  As  a  folk  they  were  passionate  and 
sentimental  rather  than  intellectual  and  self-restrained. 
They  could  easily  be  taught  to  feel  with  intensity  the  guilt 
of  sin.  They  could  easily  learn  to  fear  hell  and  its  terrors. 
They  could  easily  be  taught  to  love  Jesus  with  utmost 
devotion.  Romantic  love  and  chivalry  were  virtually 
native  to  them,  so  spontaneously  did  these  traits  appear. 
The  passionate  devotion  and  religion  of  the  monk  and  the 
sentimental  idealism  of  the  crusader  and  the  personal 
loyalty  of  the  serf  or  soldier  to  his  lord  or  leader,  and,  we 
should  add,  the  cruelty,  the  violence  and  the  lawlessness 
of  feudal  society  each  and  all  manifested  in  typical  ways 
these  underlying  northern  traits.  Such  traits  had  to  re- 
sult in  time  in  habits  that  made  the  later  medieval  religion, 
social  and  political  institutions,  art  and  literature  radically 
unlike  the  ancient  culture  which  formed  their  stimulus 
and  pattern. 

2.  The  three  factors  at  work  in  medieval  thought. — 
From  the  foregoing  statements  it  follows  that  there  were 
three  distinct  factors  at  work  in  the  intellectual  life  of 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  253 

Europe  during  the  middle  ages;  first,  fragments  of  the 
ancient  culture  of  Greece  transmitted  to  the  West  through 
Latin  writers  and  the  Roman  political  and  legal  tradition 
transmitted  for  the  greater  part  directly;  second,  the  cath- 
olic church  with  her  institutions,  ritual  and  doctrine;  and 
third,  the  energy,  the  emotions  and  the  customs  of  the 
Germanic  peoples.  The  first  factor  should  remind  us  that 
Greece  did  not  directly  influence  medieval  Europe,  but 
that  what  the  new  peoples  received  was  the  culture  of 
Italy,  Spain  and  Gaul.  This  culture  had  absorbed  Greek 
culture  but  in  absorbing  it  had  transformed  it  into  a  Latin 
culture.  Moreover,  this  Latin  culture  was  extremely  de- 
cadent. It  consisted  of  Neoplatonic  metaphysics,  logic, 
and  ethics,  of  decadent  compilations  of  ancient  as- 
tronomy, geography,  physical  science  and  mathematics, 
of  some  knowledge  of  history  but  an  uncritical  knowledge 
and  in  addition  of  the  art  of  chronology.  Again  it  con- 
sisted of  inferior  codes  of  the  Roman  law,  but  later  through 
southern  Italy  of  the  Justinian  code;  and  of  course  it  con- 
sisted of  the  actual  political  and  legal  customs  and  insti- 
tutions surviving  in  Italy,  Spain  and  Gaul  from  earlier 
times.  The  second  factor  included  in  addition  to  the 
church  as  a  living  institution  with  her  clergy,  her  monks, 
her  worship  and  her  traditions  a  goodly  quantity  of  her 
scriptural  and  patristic  literature.  Besides  the  Bible, 
this  consisted  of  writings  interpreting  scripture  for  the 
most  part  allegorically,  and  the  dogmatic  and  philosophical 
writings  of  the  great  Latin  fathers.  Here  again  the 
greater  part  of  the  thought  was  originally  Greek,  but 
Greek  thought  only  as  it  had  been  assimilated  and  added 
to  by  the  western  thinkers. 

Putting  the  beginning  of  genuinely  medieval  thought  as 
late  as  the  seventh  century  or  even  the  Carolingian  era 
we  may  speak  of  an  era  of  transmission,  the  immediately 
preceding  centuries,  when  the  Roman  peoples  were  still 


254       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

endeavoring  to  romanize  the  barbarian  invaders.  On  the 
one  hand,  were  the  compilers  ^  of  ancient  wisdom  who  wrote 
books  sufficiently  elementary  for  their  decadent  days  and 
the  barbarous  times  following.  On  the  other  hand,  were 
the  great  missionaries  ^  to  the  Teutonic  peoples  in  Gaul, 
England  and  Rhenish  Germany,  "who  labored  to  intro- 
duce Christianity,  with  antique  thought  incorporated  in  it, 
and  the  squalid  survival  of  antique  education  sheltered 
in  its  train."  In  addition  there  were  the  monasteries  and 
their  schools,  and  the  court  and  cathedral  schools.^ 

Here  we  should  recall  the  great  differences  in  the  culture 
with  which  the  invaders  were  surrounded  in  the  different 
lands.  In  Italy  the  invaders  never  truly  outnumbered 
the  ItaHans  and  were  themselves  soon  made  Itahans. 
Thus  Italy,  where  the  Roman  culture  was  thoroughly 
at  home,  never  ceased  to  be  Roman  in  spite  of  the  invaders, 
the  pestilence  and  the  confusion  during  the  dark  centuries 
from  the  fifth  to  the  eleventh  and  in  spite  of  the  extreme 
decadence  of  the  culture  she  retained.  That  is  to  say, 
the  bond  with  the  ancient  world  was  never  broken  in  her 
customs  and  thought;  and  when  better  days  came  a  re- 
viving culture  was  but  the  return  of  that  which  seemed 
her  own  naturally.  In  southern  France  similar  conditions 
obtained,  but  the  ancient  was  not  quite  so  deeply  rooted 
and  the  barbarians  were  less  easily  absorbed.  In  Spain 
again  the  ancient  held  its  own  tenaciously  though  here 
conditions  were  still  less  favorable  and  the  Latin  culture 

'  Such  men  were  Boethius  {fl.  c.  510),  Cassiodorus  (fl.  c.  520), 
Isidore  of  Seville  (fl.  c.  600)  and  Gregory  (fl.  c.  580). 

2  Such  men  as  St.  Columbanus,  St.  GaU,  St.  Augustine  of  Canter- 
bury, and  St.  Winifried-Boniface. 

^  The  basis  of  medieval  learning  was  formed  by  the  famous  trivium 
(grammar,  logic  and  rhetoric)  and  guadrivium  (music,  arithmetic, 
geometry  and  astronomy).  For  the  former  they  depended  especially 
upon  the  translations  of  Boethius  and  for  the  latter  upon  the  com- 
pendia of  Marcianus  Capelia,  Cassiodorus  and  Isidore. 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  255 

was  still  less  genuinely  native.  In  northern  France  the 
influx  of  barbarian  folk  was  greater  than  in  southern 
France,  and  this  part  of  ancient  Gaul  had  never  been  so 
thoroughly  romanized  as  had  the  South.  Therefore  the 
ancient  survived  to  a  less  extent.  "The  antique  was  not 
to  dominate  the  French  genius;  it  was  not  to  stem  the 
growth  of  what  was,  so  to  speak,  Gothic  or  northern  or 
Teutonic.  The  glass-painting,  the  sculpture,  the  archi- 
tecture of  northern  France  were  to  become  their  own  great 
French  selves;  and  while  the  literature  was  to  hold  to  forms 
derived  from  the  antique  and  the  Romanesque,  the  spirit 
and  the  contents  did  not  come  from  Italy."  In  England 
and  Germany  the  Latin  culture  came  as  a  distinct  foreign 
influence,  "which  was  not  to  pertain  to  all  men's  daily 
living.  It  was  matter  for  the  educated,  for  the  clergy. 
Its  vehicle  was  a  formal  language,  having  no  connection 
with  the  vernacular.  .  .  .  The  Anglo-Saxons  and  the 
rest  in  England  were  to  become  Englishmen,  the  Germans 
were  to  remain  Germans;  nor  was  either  race  ever  to  be- 
come Latinized,  however  deeply  the  educated  people  of 
these  countries  might  imbibe  Latinity,  and  exercise  their 
intellects  upon  all  that  was  contained  in  the  antique 
metaphysics  and  natural  science,  literature  and  law." 

What  is  true  of  the  ancient  culture  is  true  in  turn  of 
Christianity.  To  the  south  it  was  a  rehgion  at  home; 
whereas  to  the  Franks,  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  peoples 
of  the  Rhine  and  to  the  eastward  it  came  as  a  new  and 
strange  religion.  "And  the  import  of  the  fact  that  it  was 
introduced  to  them  as  an  authoritative  religion  brought 
from  afar,  did  not  lessen  as  Christianity  became  a  forma- 
tive element  in  their  natures."  In  short,  to  the  Italian 
the  older  culture  and  religion  seemed  merely  "a  greater 
ancestral  self,"  whereas  to  the  northern  peoples  they 
seemed  the  sum  of  all  knowledge  and  the  highest  point 
of  human  greatness.    "The  formulated  and  ordered  Latin 


256      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Christianity  evoked  even  deeper  homage.  Well  it  might, 
since  besides  the  resistless  Gospel  it  held  the  intelligence 
and  the  organizing  power  of  Rome.  .  .  .  And  when  this 
Christianity,  so  mighty  in  itself  and  august  through  the 
prestige  of  Rome,  was  presented  as  under  authority,  its 
new  converts  might  well  be  struck  with  awe.  It  was  such 
awe  as  this  that  acknowledged  the  claims  of  the  Roman 
bishops,  and  made  possible  a  Roman  and  Catholic  Church 
— the  most  potent  unifying  influence  of  the  middle  ages." 

Thus  under  the  action  of  the  Latin  Christianity  of  the 
fathers  and  the  ancient  culture  "the  peoples  of  western 
Europe,  from  the  eighth  to  the  thirteenth  century,  passed 
through  a  homogeneous  growth,  and  evolved  a  spirit  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  any  other  period  of  history — a  spirit 
which  stood  in  awe  before  its  monitors  divine  and  human, 
and  deemed  that  knowledge  was  to  be  drawn  from  the 
storehouse  of  the  past ;  which  seemed  to  rely  on  everything 
except  its  senses;  which  in  the  actual  looked  for  the  ideal, 
in  the  concrete  saw  the  symbol,  in  the  earthly  Church  be- 
held the  heavenly,  and  in  fleshly  joys  discerned  the  devil's 
lures;  which  lived  in  the  unreconciled  opposition  between 
the  lust  and  vain-glory  of  earth  and  the  attainment  of 
salvation;  which  felt  life's  terror  and  its  pitifulness,  and 
its  eternal  hope;  around  which  waved  concrete  infinitudes, 
and  over  which  flamed  the  terror  of  darkness  and  the 
Judgment  Day."  ^ 

The  ancient  culture  and  the  religion  of  the  church  were 
to  be  gradually  assimilated  and  to  be  recast  by  the  medi- 
eval peoples,  and  in  addition  to  this  were  to  be  emotion- 
ally transformed  and  were  to  have  new  emotional  elements 
introduced  into  them.  The  result  was  medieval  art,  archi- 
tecture, literature  and  piety,  different  from  anything 
history  had  ever  witnessed  before  and  dear  ever  since 
to  the  lover  of  romanticism. 

^  Quotations  from  Taylor,  The  Medieval  Mind,  chap.  I. 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  257 

For  further  study  read: 

Taylor,  H.  0.,  The  Medieval  Mind,  2d  ed.,  1914,  chapters 
I-VI; 

Harnack,  A.  (transl.  Kellett  and  Marseille),  Monasticism, 
1910; 

Monroe,  P.,  Textbook  in  the  History  of  Education,  221-350; 

Poole,  R.  L.,  Illustrations  of  Medieval  Thought; 

Henderson,  E.  F.,  Select  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
1910; 

Thatcher  and  McNeal,  Source  Book  for  Medieval  History, 
1905; 

Robinson,  J.  H.,  Readings  in  European  History,  Vol.  I; 

Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  116-125. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Rashdall,  H.,  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
1895; 

West,  A.  F.,  Alcuin  and  The  Rise  of  Christian  Schools,  1892; 

Taylor,  H.  0.,  The  Medieval  Mind; 

Adams,  G.  B.,  Civilization  during  the  Middle  Ages,  1899; 

Maitland,  S.  R.,  The  Dark  Ages,  1890; 

Montalembert,  C.  F.,  The  Monks  of  the  West,  1896; 

Taylor,  H.  0.,  Classical  Heritage  of  the  Middle  Ages,  1901; 

Life  of  St.  Columban,  in  Translations  and  Reprints  (Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania),  Vol.  II,  no.  7. 

3.  The  course  through  which  medieval  thought  de- 
veloped.— We  may  properly  divide  the  medieval  period 
into  two  subordinate  periods,  the  period  to  1100  and  the 
period  following.  During  the  centuries  preceding  the  elev- 
enth the  medieval  mind  was  acquiring  the  decadent  cul- 
ture transmitted  to  it  and  doing  so  in  a  manner  that  was 
thoroughly  elementary.  It  studied  the  patristic  theology ; 
it  studied  the  ancient  logic  and  rhetoric,  the  ancient 
philosophy,  mathematics,  astronomy,  and  other  natural 
sciences;  it  studied  the  Roman  law;  and  it  read  some  Ro- 
man literature.  Within  each  of  these  fields  of  study  the 
learner  gradually  widened  the  extent  of  his  acquaintance 


258      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

and  the  breadth  and  depth  of  his  interest.  What  he 
learned,  he  "labored  to  restate  or  to  expound,"  But  at 
first,  that  is,  before  and  during  the  Carolingian  period, 
this  restatement  was  little  more  than  "a  mere  shuffling 
of  the  matter"  studied.  Indeed,  "the  typical  works  of 
the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries  were  commentaries  upon 
Scripture,  consisting  of  excerpts  from  the  Fathers."  The 
tenth  century  shows  improvement  at  least  to  the  extent 
that  the  restatement  is  becoming  more  systematic.  With 
the  eleventh  century,  however,  a  marked  change  has  come, 
the  elementary  lessons  are  proving  to  have  been  mastered. 
This  advance  Taylor  summarizes  thus: "  Through  the  tenth 
and  eleventh  centuries,  one  finds  no  great  advance  in  the 
systematic  restatement  of  Christian  doctrine.  Never- 
theless, two  hundred  years  of  devotion  have  been  put  upon 
it;  and  statements  of  parts  of  it  occur,  showing  that  the 
eleventh  century  has  made  progress  over  the  ninth  in  its 
thoughtful  and  vital  appropriation  of  Latin  Christianity. 
A  man  like  German  Othloh  has  thought  for  himself  within 
its  lines;  Anselm  of  Canterbury  has  set  forth  pieces  of  it 
with  a  depth  of  reflection  and  intimacy  of  understanding 
which  make  his  works  creative;  Peter  Damiani  through 
intensity  of  feeling  has  become  the  embodiment  of  Chris- 
tian asceticism  and  the  grace  of  Christian  tears;  and 
Hildebrand  has  established  the  medieval  papal  church. 
Of  a  truth,  the  medieval  man  was  adjusting  himself,  and 
reaching  his  understanding  of  what  the  past  had  given 
him." 

With  the  twelfth  century  a  marked  advance  in  all 
departments  of  thought  and  culture  are  evident.  In 
this  century  are  to  be  found  men  widely  read  in  the  classi- 
cal Latin  authors  and  genuinely  appreciative  of  their 
literary  art  and  excellence.  For  example,  John  of  Salis- 
bury Ifl.  c.  1150)  seems  to  have  read  and  appreciated 
Terence,  Virgil  and  Ovid,  Horace,  Juvenal,  Lucan,  Persius 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  259 

and  Statius,  Cicero,  Seneca  and  Quintillian.  In  Italy 
the  study  of  the  Roman  law  has  reached  a  stage  when  the 
digest  is  studied  with  genuine  juristic  insight,  when  stu- 
dents by  the  thousands  flock  to  the  law  schools  of  Bologna 
and  Padua.  In  metaphysics  and  theology  the  thinkers 
of  this  century  are  penetrating  deeply  into  the  logical 
foundations  of  the  church's  faith  and  are  adopting  a  dis- 
tinctly independent  intellectual  attitude  toward  the  faith. 
This  can  be  seen  in  the  very  form  of  their  writings,  the 
commentary  is  giving  place  to  the  hook  of  sentences  as  in  the 
next  century  this  gives  place  to  the  summa.  That  is  to 
say,  the  thinker  was  passing  from  a  mere  expounder  of 
the  text  of  ancient  authors  to  a  writer  of  treatises  in  which 
he  has  mastered  his  sources  having  genuinely  rethought 
them  for  himself. 

Of  all  the  medieval  centuries  the  thirteenth  was  the 
most  philosophical  and  scientific.  Indeed  signs  of  the 
actual  beginning  of  modern  times  appear  in  this  century, 
a  century  to  be  numbered  among  the  greatest  in  history. 
The  twelfth  century  had  seen  an  increase  in  the  number 
of  ancient  writings  restored  to  the  students  of  Europe. 
Among  these  were  especially  important  works  of  Aristotle. 
It  took  several  decades  to  master  these  difficult  books; 
but  when,  by  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  they 
were  mastered,  the  effect  was  remarkable.  We  may  ex- 
plain this  effect  in  part  thus.  Up  to  these  times  the 
philosophical  teachers  of  Europe  were  the  late  Roman 
eclectic  and  Neoplatonic  writers  and  the  decadent  trans- 
mitters of  an  earlier  culture;  whereas  in  Aristotle  the  medi- 
eval student  was  brought  back  directly  to  the  golden  age 
of  Greek  thought.  In  other  words,  the  twelfth  and  es- 
pecially the  thirteenth  centuries  were  able  to  get  beyond 
the  many  centuries  of  decadent  Mediterranean  philosophy 
and  become  better  acquainted  with  a  very  different  in- 
tellectual world  and  were  able  to  acquire  something  of 


260      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  broader  and  more  genuinely  intellectual  interests  of 
Greece  of  the  fourth  century  B.  C.  The  Aristotelian 
philosophy  and  science  take  the  place  of  the  Neoplatonic 
and  patristic  as  the  higher  authority.  The  faith  of  the 
church  is  restated  and  rethought  as  an  Aristotelian  phi- 
losophy; and  Aristotle  becomes  and  has  remained  ever 
since  in  the  Roman  Church  the  praecursor  Christi.  The 
religious  and  theological  interest  is  broadening  into  the 
entire  range  of  Greek  science,  and  thinkers  are  beginning 
to  talk  of  experimenting  and  of  observing  nature.  Indeed, 
like  children  they  are  beginning  to  experiment  and  investi- 
gate, that  is,  their  research  is  half  magic;  but  let  us  not 
forget  that  the  astrology  and  the  alchemy  of  these  days 
are  the  direct  and  immediate  ancestors  of  modern  astron- 
omy, physics  and  chemistry. 

The  last  stage  of  medieval  philosophical  thought  also 
begins  in  the  thirteenth  century.  It  comes  as  the  rival  of 
Aristotelianism  and  prophesies  the  coming  struggle  be- 
tween the  Aristotelians  and  the  founders  of  modern  science. 
It  reacts  against  the  entire  endeavor  to  philosophize 
Christianity,  an  endeavor  that,  as  we  have  seen,  began 
in  the  third  century  and  reached  its  fulfillment  in  two  dis- 
tinct Christian  philosophies: — first,  the  Neoplatonic 
Christian  philosophy  of  Augustine  and  the  Neoplatonic 
schoolmen  before  1200;  and  second,  the  Aristotelian  Chris- 
tian philosophy  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  philosophy 
of  Thomas  Aquinas.  Against  this  entire  endeavor  to 
philosophize  Christianity  the  new  movement  in  medieval 
thought  contends  that  religion  and  revelation  on  the  one 
hand,  and  science  on  the  other  hand,  are  two  radically 
distinct  matters.  It  is  impossible  to  prove  the  church's 
faith  and  it  is  impossible  to  search  out  and  explain  the 
great  mysteries  of  creation,  sin  and  redemption.  In  re- 
ligion we  must  rest  satisfied  to  believe  without  understand- 
ing.   Moreover,  it  is  impossible  to  deduce  validly  a  world 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  261 

hypothesis  out  of  mere  logical  principles  as  philosophers 
from  the  time  of  Plato  have  endeavored  to  do.  Thus 
the  entire  enterprise  of  speculative  philosophy  is  in  vain, 
it  is  a  mere  war  of  words,  empty  of  any  genuine  informa- 
tion. The  true  business  of  science  is  to  investigate  nature, 
to  learn  regarding  the  things  of  the  world  that  form  men's 
environment.  Science  must  rise  from  the  dust,  it  is  fatal 
for  it  to  try  to  soar  among  the  clouds.  Thus  let  religion 
and  science  each  go  its  way  in  peace,  religion  to  stir  men's 
hearts  and  to  win  their  wills,  science  to  investigate  nature.^ 

The  various  schools  and  parties  of  medieval  thought 
survived  not  only  into  the  following  centuries  but  to  our 
own  times;  for  to  outgrow  the  philosophic  thought  of  the 
middle  ages  has  been  a  long  struggle  and  this  struggle  is 
by  no  means  ended.  However,  the  beginning  of  this 
struggle  marked  the  beginning  of  a  new  age,  the  age  of 
discovery.  What  the  intellectual  world  lacked  in  those 
days  was  not  thought  but  information;  for  information, 
not  argument  could  decide  the  issues  that  were  arising,  and 
information  alone  could  enable  the  European  thinker  to 
escape  from  medieval  thought.  This  information  began 
to  come  markedly  in  the  fifteenth  century  and  has  contin- 
ued to  come  uninterruptedly  ever  since. 

4.  The  content  of  medieval  philosophic  thought. — The 
chief  lesson  the  church  had  to  teach  the  medieval  people 
was  her  faith  and  dogmatic  theology.  To  understand 
this  body  of  doctrine  required  first  an  elementary  training 
in  the  ancient  culture  in  the  form  in  which  that  culture 
still  survived  in  the  late  western  Roman  Empire.  More- 
over, the  writings  of  the  church  fathers  contained  far  more 
than  the  scriptural  and  primitive  Christianity,  for  they 

^  The  names  to  be  associated  with  this  movement  as  those  of  its 
great  leaders  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  are  Roger 
Bacon  and  Duns  Scotus  and  his  pupil  William  of  Occam.  They  all 
come  from  England,  a  fact,  as  we  shall  see,  of  great  importance. 


262      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

were  composed  by  men  that  had  been  trained  in  the  entire 
wisdom  of  their  time.  In  other  words,  the  supreme  sub- 
ject of  thought  and  study  in  the  middle  ages  was  the 
church  and  her  doctrine;  and  only  incidentally  and  acci- 
dentally were  fragments  of  the  ancient  culture  also  in- 
cluded. Therefore  we  may  at  once  make  two  general 
statements:  first,  that  the  content  of  philosophic  thought 
in  the  middle  ages  was  the  church  and  her  doctrine;  and 
second,  that  as  this  content  slowly  expanded  so  that  it 
included  besides  more  and  more  of  the  ancient  culture  and 
more  and  more  of  the  facts  of  the  world  forming  man's 
immediate  environment,  medieval  thought  passed  into 
modern  thought.  That  is  to  say,  though  the  interests  of 
the  medieval  thinker  were  at  first  exclusively  theological; 
gradually  three  other  interests  arose  and  became  promi- 
nent in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries.  These  in- 
terests were:  first,  the  ancient  pagan  literature  of  Rome 
in  the  days  of  the  republic  and  the  early  empire;  second, 
the  Roman  law  in  the  Justinian  codification;  and,  lastly, 
the  mind  of  man  and  the  world  that  forms  the  subject  of 
study  in  natural  science. 

From  these  facts  two  further  truths  follow  immediately 
regarding  the  content  of  medieval  thought:  first,  the 
medieval  thinker  was  concerned  with  a  body  of  settled 
doctrine  taught  and  promulgated  with  authority  and 
backed  by  the  overwhelming  power  of  the  church;  second, 
the  medieval  thinker  was  narrowly  limited  in  the  amount 
of  information  he  possessed  and  therefore  in  the  subject- 
matter  of  his  thought.  That  is,  he  was  extremely  ig- 
norant compared  with  the  scientists  of  ancient  Athens  and 
Alexandria  and  compared  especially  with  the  educated 
modern.  However,  neither  fact  should  hide  from  us  the 
further  fact  that  he  was  a  great  thinker  though  an  ignorant 
man,  that  he  was  often  a  man  of  gigantic  inborn  intel- 
lectual capacity,  at  first  a  victim  of  his  environment  but 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  263 

in  the  end  a  conqueror  of  the  old  world  and  a  pioneer  of  a 
new  world. 

(a)  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  realism. — The  faith  of 
the  church  was  virtually  settled  by  the  beginning  of  the 
middle  ages  and  therefore  required  of  her  medieval  thinkers 
only  interpretation  and  philosophical  formulation  and 
justification.^  Even  this  task  of  transforming  the  faith 
into  a  theology  had  been  begun  long  before  under  the 
influence  of  the  same  general  philosophy  exemplified  also 
in  Neoplatonism  and  had  reached  its  highest  formulation 
in  the  works  of  Augustine.  Indeed,  in  the  broadest  sense 
of  the  word,  Neoplatonism,  the  Christian  philosophy 
was  Neoplatonic ;  and  it  remained  so  until  the  thirteenth 
century  when  it  became  Aristotelian.  In  the  meantime, 
however,  the  early  medieval  thinkers  continued  the  work 
of  philosophizing  the  Christian  tradition,  sometimes  in 

'  "From  century  to  century  may  be  traced  the  process  of  restate- 
ment of  patristic  Christianity,  with  the  antique  material  contained 
in  it.  The  Christianity  of  the  fifth  century  contained  an  amphtude 
of  thought  and  learning.  To  the  creative  work  of  earlier  and  chiefly 
eastern  men  the  Latin  intellect  finally  incorporate  in  Ambrose, 
Jerome,  and  Augustine  had  added  its  further  great  accomplishment 
and  ordering.  The  sum  of  dogma  was  well-nigh  made  up;  the  Trin- 
ity was  established;  Christian  learning  had  reached  a  compass  be- 
yond which  it  was  not  to  pass  for  the  next  thousand  years;  the  doc- 
trines as  to  the  'sacred  mysteries,'  as  to  the  functions  of  the  Church 
and  its  spiritual  authority,  existed  in  substance;  the  principles  of 
symbolism  and  allegory  had  been  set;  the  great  mass  of  allegorical 
Scriptural  interpretations  had  been  devised;  the  spiritual  relation- 
ship of  man  to  God's  ordainment,  to  wit,  the  part  to  be  played  by 
the  human  will  in  man's  salvation  or  damnation,  had  been  reasoned 
out;  and  man's  need  and  love  of  God,  his  nothingness  apart  from  the 
Source  and  King  and  End  of  Life,  had  been  uttered  in  words  which 
men  still  use.  Evidently  succeeding  generations  of  less  illumination 
could  not  add  to  this  vast  intellectual  creation;  much  indeed  had  to 
be  done  before  they  could  comprehend  and  make  it  theirs,  so  as  to 
use  it  as  an  element  of  their  own  thinking,  or  possess  it  as  an  inspira- 
tion of  passionate,  imaginative  reverie."  (Taylor,  Medieval  Mind, 
chap.  I.) 


264      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  line  pursued  by  Augustine  and  sometimes  in  the  line 
of  Neoplatonism  in  the  narrow  sense. ^ 

^  The  most  prominent  among  medieval  thinkers  were  the  following: 
— Scotus  Erigena,  from  Ireland  (fl.  c.  850).  He  was  active  at  the 
court  school  of  Paris.  Translated  the  pseudo-Dionysius.  Far  trans- 
cended the  students  of  his  age  in  his  knowledge  of  Neoplatonic  writers 
and  their  doctrines.  Was  himself  a  pronounced  Neoplatonist.  An- 
selm  of  Canterbury  (fl.  c.  1075).  His  most  celebrated  writings  are 
the  Cur  Deus  Homo?,  the  Monologium,  and  the  Proslogium.  These 
writings  are  especially  renowned  for  their  proofs  of  the  existence  of 
God.  Notice  the  gap  of  two  hundred  years  between  Erigena  and 
Anselm,  the  next  equally  noted  thinker.  In  the  early  controversy 
between  the  realists  and  the  nominalists  the  famous  representative 
of  nominalism  was  Roscellin  of  Brittany  (fl.  c.  1090)  and  the  most 
famous  opponents  of  nominahsm  were  besides  Anselm,  Wilham  of 
Champeaux  (fl.  c.  1110)  and  Bernard  of  Chartres  (fl.  c.  1125).  The 
Platonism  of  these  days  was  based  upon  Plato's  Timseus  which  was 
interpreted  in  the  Ught  of  Neoplatonism.  Abelard,  of  Pallet  in  the 
county  of  Nantes  (fl.  c.  1120).  Taught  especially  at  the  cathedral 
school  of  Paris  and  at  the  school  of  St.  Genevieve.  One  of  the  greats 
est  thinkers  of  the  medieval  period.  Represents  the  dawn  of  revolt 
against  the  supreme  intellectual  authority  of  the  church.  In  the 
forementioned  controversy  he  took  a  middle  ground  between  the 
extremists.  His  great  opponent  was  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  the  great 
orthodox  mystic  of  the  twelfth  century  (fl.  c.  1130).  Another  con- 
temporary mystic  that  should  be  mentioned  is  Hugo,  a  monk  of  St. 
Victor  at  Paris  (fl.  c.  1135).  Besides  the  forementioned  thinkers  two 
others  should  be  named  because  of  their  wider  interests.  Gerbert, 
afterward  Pope  Sylvester  II  (fl.  c.  980),  became  interested,  through 
Arabian  scholars  in  Spain,  in  mathematics  and  physics.  John  of 
Salisbury  (fl.  c.  1150)  was  widely  and  deeply  interested  in  the  pagan 
classical  writers  of  ancient  Rome.  The  reception  of  Aristotle  falls 
in  the  century  1 150-1250.  "It  began  with  the  more  valuable  parts  of 
the  Organon,  hitherto  unknown,  and  proceeded  to  the  metaphysical, 
physical,  and  ethical  books,  always  accompanied  by  the  introduction 
of  the  Arabian  explanatory  writings."  "The  doctrine  of  the  Domini- 
cans, which  has  remained  until  the  present  time  the  official  doctrine 
of  the  Roman  Church,  was  created  by  Albert  and  Thomas."  Albert 
the  Great,  a  Swabian  (fl.  c.  1235),  taught  in  Cologne  and  Paris. 
"His  writings  consist  for  the  most  part  of  paraphrases  and  commen- 
taries upon  Aristotle."  Thomas  Aquinas,  born  in  lower  Italy,  (fl.  c. 
1265),  taught  at  Naples,  Cologne,  Paris,  Rome  and  Bologna.    His 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  265 

The  central  problem  throughout  both  the  Neoplatonic 
and  the  Aristotelian  medieval  theology  was  the  issue 
between  the  realist  and  the  nominalist.  Certain  philo- 
sophical principles  were  required  to  prove  that  God  exists, 
that  though  three  persons  He  is  one  God,  that  all  men  fell 
in  Adam's  sin  and  that  all  men  can  be  saved  through  the 
merit  of  one  divine  man,  that  the  Church  is  an  entity  come 
down  from  heaven,  a  reality  over  and  above  the  men  and 
women  who  are  her  members,  that  in  the  eucharist  the 
bread  and  wine  literally  become  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ  and  yet  remain  visibly  bread  and  wine,  and  finally, 
in  addition  to  other  doctrines,  that  the  church's  view  of 
life  is  justified,  a  view  of  life  that  is  distinctly  other-worldly, 
a  view  of  life  in  which  this  world  is  but  the  threshold  of  a 
better  world,  in  which  the  chief  business  of  life  is  the 

most  noted  writings  are  the  Summa  Theologies  and  the  Summa 
contra  Gentiles.  Thomas  is  the  most  famous  of  the  Aristotelian 
Schoolmen.  "The  Augustine  Platonic  opposition  against  the  sus- 
pected Aristotehanism  of  the  Arabians  had  as  its  chief  supporters: 
William  of  Auvergne  (fl.  c.  1240)  and  Henry  of  Ghent  (fl.  c.  1260). 
"The  sharpest  opposition  to  Thomism  grew  out  of  the  Franciscan 
order."  Two  men  are  especially  important:  Roger  Bacon  and  Duns 
Scotus,  Roger  Bacon  (fl.  c.  1250),  born  in  England,  educated  in  Ox- 
ford and  Paris.  Bacon  is  famous  for  his  reaction  against  the  whole 
scholastic  philosophy  and  his  adolescent  enthusiasm  for  natural 
scientific  research.  Duns  Scotus  was  perhaps  the  most  important 
medieval  thinker  (fl.  c.  1300).  His  home  was  either  in  Ireland  or 
Northumberland.  He  attacked  especially  the  work  of  Thomas. 
The  greatest  leader  of  the  fourteenth  century  nominalists  was  Wil- 
liam of  Occam,  born  in  England,  trained  under  Duns  Scotus  (fl.  c. 
1330).  "  He  unites  in  himself  all  the  elements  with  the  help  of  which 
the  new  science  forced  its  way  out  of  Scholasticism."  Although  a 
loyal  Churchman  he  took  an  active  part  in  his  day  in  the  struggle  of 
the  State  against  the  Church.  Among  the  Arabian  philosophers  of 
the  middle  ages  the  following  are  the  most  famous:  Avicenna  of  Bok- 
hara (fl.  c.  1020);  Averroes  of  Cordova  (fl.  c.  1145);  and,  among 
the  Jewish  philosophers,  Moses  Maimonides  of  Cordova  (fl.  c.  1175). 
(This  note  is  based  in  part  upon  the  list  of  medieval  philosophers 
given  by  Windelband  in  his  History  of  Philosophy.) 


266      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

salvation  of  the  soul  and  the  worship  and  contemplation 
of  the  heavenly  host,  a  view  of  life  in  which  the  origin, 
the  nature  and  the  entire  significance  of  this  world  is  to  be 
found  in  a  higher,  or  supernatural  world.  To  repeat,  cer- 
tain philosophical  principles  were  needed  to  prove  these 
several  doctrines;  and  Platonic  reaUsm  furnished  them 
admirably. 

Strange  to  say,  these  principles  in  turn  virtually  reduce 
to  one  and  that  is  the  relative  philosophical  importance  of 
the  individual  concrete  object  and  the  genus  to  which  that 
object  belongs.  For  example,  when  we  classify  the  ani- 
mals, the  classes  seem  more  important  than  the  individual 
specimen  in  our  museum;  and  when  we  subsume  the  lower 
classes  under  the  higher,  these  higher  classes  seem  more 
important  than  the  lower.  Moreover,  we  may  be  prone 
to  regard  these  classes  as  realities,  to  think  of  them  as 
existing  before  the  actual  origin  of  the  individual  animals 
we  have  classed  under  them,  and  finally  even  to  think  of 
these  logical  entities  that  we  have  made  logically  prior 
to  the  individual,  as  the  cause  that  has  brought  the  in- 
dividual into  existence.  That  is  to  say :  first,  the  Platonist 
confused  logical  existence,  with  existence  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  King  of  England  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean  are 
asserted  to  exist;  second,  he  confused  logical  priority  in 
classification  with  pre-existence,  that  is,  he  asserted  that 
the  form.  Cat  preceded  the  individual  cats,  or  in  general, 
that  the  order  of  creation  has  been  from  the  logically 
higher  to  the  logically  lower;  third,  he  confused  the  logical 
priority  in  classification  with  causal  origin,  that  is,  he 
asserted  that  the  form.  Cat  originated  the  individual  cats, 
or  in  general,  that  the  logically  higher  world  is  the  creative 
originator  of  the  logically  lower  world;  and  fourth,  he  con- 
fused the  logical  system  of  classes  in  which  the  lower 
classes  are  subsumed  under  higher  and  higher  classes  and 
fewer  and  fewer  classes,  the  logical  hierarchy,  with  the 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  267 

spheres  of  existence  suggested  by  the  geocentric  astronomy 
of  the  Greeks,  with  the  scale  of  existent  entities  from  earth 
to  the  heaven  and  to  God  beyond.  Thus  the  world  seemed 
to  him  a  step  ladder  with  God  at  the  top  and  the  things  of 
earth  at  the  bottom  and  the  angels  and  the  church,  the 
kingdom  of  divine  grace,  in  between.  Again,  the  higher 
had  to  exist  to  make  the  existence  of  the  lower  possible; 
and  therefore  the  higher  was  a  necessary  existent,  whereas 
relatively  the  lower  was  an  accidental  existent.  Indeed 
the  higher  had  more  reality  and  the  lower  less.  Thus  it 
follows  that  God,  the  logically  supreme  being  by  definition, 
not  only  exists  necessarily  but  is  the  most  real  and  perfect 
being.  It  follows  that  you  and  I  and  all  men  could  fall 
before  ever  we  existed;  and  it  follows  that  you  and  I  and 
all  men  could  be  saved  as  a  race  before  ever  we  drew 
breath.  It  follows  that  the  accidental  features  of  the 
bread  and  wine  are  subsidiary  to  its  substance,  and  that 
this  logically  prior  substance  is  independent  of  the  acci- 
dents and  can  change  though  they  do  not.  It  follows  that 
the  church  is  a  higher  order  of  existent  than  all  things 
.earthly  and  than  all  the  kingdoms  of  men,  that  it  stands 
between  earth  and  God,  that  there  is  no  medium  between 
the  individual  and  God  except  the  church,  the  sacraments 
and  the  spirits  and  angels,  God's  higher  creatures,  that  the 
church  is  not  man-made  but  has  descended  from  heaven 
and  has  absolute  authority  over  men  and  holds  the  keys 
of  heaven  and  hell.  Finally,  it  follows  that  the  significance 
of  all  things  earthly  is  to  be  found  in  terms  of  things 
above,  that  the  world  about  us  speaks  in  every  part  of  the 
heavenly  world  which  it  dimly  reflects,  that  the  world  is 
but  an  allegory  telling  the  story  of  the  divine  and  higher 
world,  that  all  creation  looks  upward  to  God  and  that 
nothing  can  be  explained  except  in  terms  of  the  heavenly 
system,  and  that  of  all  orders  of  existence  nature  and  man's 
earthly  enterprise  are  least  important  and  least  interesting 


268      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

and  are  either  important  or  interesting  at  all  only  because 
of  their  relations  to  the  heavenly  or  higher  world. 

However,  a  reaction  was  soon  to  come  against  all  this 
ancient  realism.  We  can  suppress  human  instincts,  but 
they  will  refuse  to  die  and  will  surely  rebel  at  first  secretly 
but  at  last  openly.  Man  is  an  individual  and  is  by  instinct 
more  interested  in  this  individual  than  in  the  whole  hier- 
archy of  the  worlds.  The  concrete  world  about  him  in- 
terests him  instinctively,  and  a  world  of  abstractions 
which  interferes  with  this  interest  is  in  time  sure  to  be 
swept  away.  In  the  middle  ages  this  rebellion  appears  in 
philosophic  thought  as  nominalism,  that  is,  as  the  doctrine 
that  the  individual  concrete  object  alone  is  real  and  that 
the  genus  is  a  mere  symbol  or  word.  Nominalism  was  of 
course  latent  heresy,  and  as  such  it  was  suspected  and 
discouraged  by  the  church.  Carried  out  fully  in  practice 
it  meant  what  Europe  has  since  seen,  democracy,  in- 
dividualism, worldliness,  intellectual  freedom,  industrialism 
and  nationalism.  Its  spirit  can  be  seen  typically  in- 
carnate in  the  English  people  even  in  those  far  away  days. 
Thus  nominalism  was  the  medieval  philosophical  reaction 
against  Neoplatonism  and  Aristotelianism  and  was  the 
precursor  of  the  distant  storm.^  It  fought  Platonic  realism 
even  in  the  church's  own  arena,  endeavoring  to  show  that 
doctrine  to  be  a  hidden  heresy  and  non-Christian.  It  as- 
serted that  Christianity  is  not  a  philosophical  science  but  a 
revelation,  is  not  a  matter  of  intellectual  debate,  but  a  faith 
that  wins  man's  heart  and  wjll.  To  prove  the  existence  of 
God  is  impossible.  Platonism  is  but  a  disguised  pantheism 
which  makes  the  world,  from  God  to  the  humblest  crea- 
ture, a  logical  necessity  and  therefore  ignores  the  noblest 
and  most  characteristic  fact  of  life  and  of  sainthood,  the 
will  and  its  struggle  to  realize  its  ideals.  Let  the  church 
take  her  true  place  in  the  world.  Let  her  set  aside  her 
worldly  ambitions  and  return  to  the  ''simphcity,  purity 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  269 

and  holiness  of  the  apostolic  times."  Finally,  instead  of 
the  world  being  a  logical  step  ladder,  it  may  be  but  the 
succession  of  individual  entities  and  events  throughout 
eternity  each  causing  its  successor. 

Evidently  nominalism  is  but  an  earlier  form  of  the  wide- 
spread modern  philosophy  called  positivism.  That  is, 
it  limits  man's  intellect  to  the  study  of  what  he  can  ob- 
serve, the  world  of  concrete  individual  objects;  and  it 
warns  him  not  to  attempt  to  go  farther  into  the  world's 
secrets,  not  to  attempt  to  fly  with  the  wings  of  logic  and 
words  up  into  a  medium  that  will  not  sustain  him.  It 
teaches  him  that  science  is  of  the  dust  and  that  the  pseudo- 
science  of  the  clouds  is  mere  words,  high-sounding  words, 
none  the  less  words  utterly  void  of  information. 

A  further  part  of  this  medieval  controversy  is  the  prob- 
lem: Has  the  intellect  or  the  will  the  primacy?  Though 
this  problem  is  an  early  form  of  the  psychological  problem 
of  the  relation  of  man's  intellect  to  his  instincts  and  of  the 
place  of  knowledge  in  human  life,  it  is  also  a  strictly  phil- 
osophical problem.  As  a  philosophical  question  it  asks: 
Is  the  world  one  that  can  be  understood,  is  it,  in  other 
words,  an  object  that  science  can  explain  and  analyze 
logically;  or  does  the  world  ultimately  defy  both  logic  and 
science?  The  Neoplatonist  regarded  the  world  as  logical; 
but  the  nominalist  tended  to  regard  it  as  alogical,  for  the 
world  is  ultimately  like  our  wills  as  popularly  conceived. 
That  is,  human  conduct  defies  prediction  and  explanation, 
for  the  will  is  free;  so  also  is  nature  free  as  the  world  created 
by  the  free  act  of  God's  will.  His  will  and  His  ways  are 
past  finding  out.  They  are  so,  not  because  we  are  ignorant, 
but  because  they  have  no  explanation,  because  they  can- 
not be  deduced  as  can  the  properties  of  a  triangle,  because 
His  will  is  free  and  is  prior  to  His  intellect.^    In  short,  a 

^  This  doctrine  again  is  an  early  stage  of  a  nineteenth-century 
philosophy  that  is  called  romanticism.    Romanticism  teaches  that 


270       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

science  of  creation  and  of  why  the  world  is  the  sort  of 
world  it  is,  is  quite  impossible. 

A  final  subsidiary  part  of  the  stmggle  between  the  real- 
ist and  the  nominalist  was  the  conflict  between  their  moral 
theories.  A  Platonic  morality  is  essentially  a  philosophi- 
cal, or  intellectual  way  of  Hfe;  and  a  Neoplatonic  morahty, 
taking  one  step  further  in  the  same  direction,  is  the  freeing 
of  the  soul  from  the  contamination  of  the  flesh  by  means 
of  the  spiritual,  religious  and  contemplative  life.  That 
is  to  say,  the  realistic  morality  is  the  centering  of  life's 
enterprise  upon  the  return  of  the  soul  to  God,  upon  free- 
dom from  the  lower  world  and  upon  the  contemplation 
of  the  heavenly  world.  It  is  essentially  an  other-worldly 
philosophy  of  life  and  is  admirably  exemplified  for  us  in 
monasticism  and  in  general  in  mysticism.  In  contrast, 
the  nominalistic  morality  is  exemplified  rather  in  the  earli- 
est Christian  tradition,  in  the  life  of  mutual  love  and 
service,  in  the  life  of  good  works  and  of  good  citizenship, 
in  doing  one's  duty  in  the  ordinary  walks  of  daily  life. 
It  is  essentially  of  this  world  and  its  good  deeds  spring 
from  man's  interests  in  this  world.  The  kingdom  of  God 
that  nominalism  seeks  to  establish  is  not  beyond  the 
moon  but  upon  earth.^ 

nature  is  universally  spontaneous  and  therefore  inexplicable  genera- 
tion. It  is  the  onward  drive  of  creative  forces  which  we  can  observe 
and  record  but  never  understand.  Indeed,  it  is  absurd  even  to  try 
to  understand  them,  for  their  very  nature  is  to  generate  spontaneously 
and  not  to  derive  logically  that  which  they  produce. 

1  Notice  that  this  conflict  between  realist  and  nominalist  is  an 
early  stage  of  the  development  which  was  to  split  western  Chris- 
tianity in  twain  three  centuries  later.  The  nominalists  were  essen- 
tially Protestants  and  individualists,  whereas  the  realists  were  the 
defenders  of  the  philosophy  that  is  essential  to  the  Catholic  theology 
and  that  has  therefore  remained  the  official  philosophy  of  the  Roman 
church.  Again  notice  that  the  nominalists  were  chiefly  English 
Franciscans  and  that  English  philosophy  has  remained  typically 
nominalistic  from  the  thirteenth  century  to  the  present  time. 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  271 

(b)  The  problem  of  the  seat  of  authority. — There 
were,  we  saw,  two  major  aspects  to  medieval  theological 
thought.  The  first  we  have  considered,  namely,  the  en- 
deavor to  philosophize  Christianity  and  the  breakdown 
of  this  endeavor  in  nominahsm.  Let  us  turn  to  the  other 
aspect,  the  fact  that  the  faith  of  the  church  was  taught 
to  the  medieval  peoples  as  resting  upon  the  authority  of 
the  church  and  not  upon  the  intellect  of  the  individual 
believer.  Before  medieval  times  the  early  church  fathers 
had  looked  with  distrust  upon  Greek  philosophy  and  upon 
the  effort  to  justify  the  faith  as  a  philosophy.  Not  because 
the  gospel  message  had  been  proved  to  them,  did  they 
believe;  rather  they  believed  because  this  message  was  the 
word  of  the  Lord  which  was  to  make  the  wisdom  of  this 
world  foolishness.  As  the  church  grew  in  power  and  was 
forced  by  the  very  spirit  of  the  age  to  concern  herself 
regarding  the  orthodoxy  of  her  children,  she  taught,  not 
as  one  debating  with  his  intellectual  peers,  but  as  one 
speaking  with  authority,  as  the  infallible  guardian  of  a 
revelation  committed  to  her  by  God  Himself  to  be  carried 
to  all  peoples.  When  finally  the  church  brought  her  mes- 
sage to  the  northern  barbarians  and  they  cowered  before 
her  superior  culture  and  wisdom,  neither  in  her  nor  in 
them  was  any  tendency  to  regard  that  message  as  one  that 
could  be  questioned  by  the  individual  or  as  a  doctrine  of 
whose  truth  his  intellect  was  to  be  the  ultimate  judge.  In 
short,  the  ultimate  seat  of  authority  was  not  the  individual 
but  the  church. 

When  later  the  medieval  intellect  first  commenced  to 
study  and  to  philosophize,  the  universal  attitude  of  both 
church  and  thinker  remained  the  same  as  at  the  beginning. 
If  Christianity  was  to  be  understood  it  must  first  be  be- 
lieved. The  motto  remained,  credo  ut  intelligam.  How- 
ever, this  attitude  could  not  last.  As  men  became  more 
and  more  masters  of  the  traditional  knowledge  and  of  the 


272      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

intellectual  habits  of  the  thinker;  their  philosophizing 
became  a  serious  and  self-confident  undertaking.  They 
began  to  use  it  to  help  themselves  to  believe.  In  other 
words,  they  were  becoming  skeptical,  much  as  they  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  suppressed  their  skepticism. 
For  example,  Anselm,  the  great  thinker  of  the  eleventh 
century  and  pious  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  though  he 
never  avowed  to  himself  consciously  any  doubt  in  the 
church's  infallible  authority,  seems  none  the  less  to  have 
been  genuinely  skeptical  in  temperament.  He  was  the 
author  of  famous  arguments  for  the  existence  of  God, 
and  he  seems  to  have  labored  long  to  discover  them  and 
to  have  needed  them  for  his  own  peace  of  mind. 

In  the  next  century,  the  suppressed  reason  asserts  itself 
in  the  voice  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  Europe's  thinkers, 
Abelard,  who  teaches  that  man  is  not  to  be  required  to 
believe  on  the  authority  of  the  church,  for  man's  reason 
has  the  right  to  be  satisfied.  Our  motto  should  be  not 
credo  ut  intelligam  but  intelligo  ut  credam.  Evidently  this 
was  a  dangerous  doctrine  and  was  felt  to  be  such  in  the 
time  of  Abelard.  It  is  inherently  a  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence, and  as  the  centuries  went  by  it  became  not  the 
motto  of  one  man  but  the  spirit  of  the  intellectual  world. 
It  foretold  the  revolt  of  the  modern  man  from  the  author- 
ity of  his  mother,  the  church;  and  it  showed  that  her 
children  were  already  reaching  adolescence. 

(c)  Medieval  mysticism. — But  the  thinkers  of  me- 
dieval Europe  were  not  all  intellectualists,  for  among 
them  were  many  whose  very  philosophy  was  the  vanity 
of  all  philosophy  and  science.  There  was  the  old  contro- 
versy between  the  heart  and  the  head.  To  the  mystic, 
as  ever,  religion  was  a  matter  of  personal  experience,  of 
direct  insight  and  revelation.  And  the  medieval  church 
had  her  mystics  to  fear  fully  as  much  as  her  intellectual- 
ists; for  a  doctrine  that  made  the  individual  religious 


MEDIEVAL  THOUGHT  273 

experience  authoritative  lessened  and  even  undermined, 
no  matter  how  unintentionally,  the  supremacy  of  church 
authority.  Moreover,  the  mystics  were  close  to  the  gen- 
uine medieval  spirit  and  sentiment.  In  them  the  true 
medieval  emotion  could  express  itself;  and  it  is  the  fact 
that  the  religious  consciousness  of  medieval  Europe  did 
so  express  itself  that  has  made  the  devotional  literature 
of  medieval  mysticism  an  unsurpassed  treasure  contain- 
ing gems  precious  beyond  price. 

With  all  these  signs  that  medieval  philosophic  thought 
was  coming  to  manhood  we  must  bring  our  brief  account 
of  medieval  philosophy  to  a  close.  In  these  very  days  of 
the  twelfth,  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  man's 
intellect  was  achieving  other  things  that  indicated  even 
more  surely  that  a  new  era  in  history  had  indeed  com- 
menced, that  natural  science  was  soon  to  begin  as  began 
of  old  the  science  of  the  lonians;  but  these  events  belong 
to  the  rise  of  the  age  of  discovery. 

For  further  study  read: 

Windelband,  W.,  History  of  Philosophy,  1901,  263-347; 
Taylor,   H.   0.,  The  Medieval  Mind,  chapters  XXXV- 

XLIV; 
St.  Anselm  (transl.  Deane),  Proslogium,  Monologium,  etc.. 

Open  Court  Publ.  Co.; 
McCabe,  J.,  Abelard,  1901; 
Vaughan,  R.  W.  B.,  Life  and  Labors  of  St.  Thomas  of 

Aquin; 
Aquinas  (Rickaby  transl.),  Of  God  and  His  Creatures,  a 

translation  of  the  Summa  contra  Gentiles,  1905; 
Vaughan,  R.  A.,  Hours  with  the  Mystics; 
Gregory,  E.  C,  Introduction  to  Christian  Mysticism; 
Poole,  R.  L.,  Illustrations  of  Medieval  Thought; 
Thomas  k  Kempis,  Imitation  of  Christ. 
For  more  extensive  reading: 

Rashdall,    H.,    Universities    of    Europe    in    the    Middle 

Ages; 


274      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Dante,  Comedia  and  the  New  Life  (transL  C.  E.  Norton); 
Wulf,  M.  de,  History  of  Medieval  Philosophy,  1909; 
Erdmann,  J.  E.,  History  of  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  Part  II; 
Dunning,  W.  A.,  History  of  Political  Theories,  Ancient  and 
Medieval,  1902. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE   AGE   OF   DISCOVERY 

1.  Introductory. — To  call  the  fourteenth,  fifteenth, 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  the  age  of  discovery- 
is  convenient,  but  arbitrary;  for  it  cuts  this  era  short  at 
each  end.  On  the  one  hand,  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  really  began  the  great  era  of  discovery  for  they 
witnessed  a  genuine  enhrgement  of  the  intellectual  hori- 
zon in  western  Europe.  On  the  other  hand,  the  age  of 
discovery  has  continued  uninterrupted  from  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  the  present  time,  for  discoveries  phil- 
osophically revolutionary  have  been  witnessed  by  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  and  even  already  by 
the  twentieth.  Thus  we  may  speak  properly  of  the  past 
eight  centuries  as  the  Age  of  Discovery  in  the  broad  sense, 
and  accordingly  of  the  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  as  the  Age  of  Discovery  in  the  nar- 
row sense.  This  fact  that  modern  intellectual  movements 
may  be  taken  in  both  a  broad  and  a  narrow  sense  has  two 
important  aspects.  First,  it  is  an  example  of  a  general 
rule.  Second,  it  requires  us  to  study  the  history  of  modern 
thought  not  in  terms  of  two  or  three  centuries  but  rather 
in  terms  of  movements  that  involve  many  centuries.  I 
mean  by  calling  this  fact  an  example  of  a  general  rule 
that  after  a  great  historical  movement  starts,  it  character- 
istically keeps  on,  though  in  the  meantime  other  great 
movements  have  started  and  have  become  more  promi- 
nent. Thus  the  age  of  discovery  has  really  never  ceased 
since  it  began  centuries  ago,  but  in  the  meantime  other 

276 


276      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

movements  have  come,  and  have  taken  the  place  of  prom- 
inence. This  overlapping  of  periods  in  the  history  of 
thought  is  somewhat  like  the  succession  of  strata  of  dif- 
ferent geological  ages  in  the  crust  of  the  earth.  That 
is  to  say,  the  age  of  discovery  is  one  of  the  strata  of  the  in- 
tellectual world  of  to-day,  though  we  may  speak  of  our 
time  in  terms  of  other  more  prominent  strata.  Since  the 
sixteenth  century  other  strata  have  been  forming  and  these 
strata  too  have  been  built  into  our  intellectual  world  so 
that  the  total  intellectual  structure  of  our  age  has  within 
it  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  eighteenth  and  nine- 
teenth century  formations.  For  example,  the  fifteenth 
century  was  famous  for  its  interest  in  geographical  explo- 
ration and  discovery,  but  we  have  never  ceased  to  be  in- 
terested in  such  explorations  even  though  we  have  become 
interested  in  many  other  things  besides.  As  witness  of 
this,  recall  the  recent  polar  explorations  attracting  our 
widespread  interest.  The  seventeenth  century  is  distinctly 
naturalistic  in  its  philosophical  outlook,  and  naturalism 
has  never  since  ceased  to  be  a  genuine  part  of  our  complex 
intellectual  hfe.  The  nineteenth  century  witnessed  a 
marked  revival  of  romanticism,  but  romanticism  had 
never  entirely  died  since  medieval  times.  The  eighteenth 
century  with  its  French  revolution  is  famous  for  its  pohti- 
cal  doctrines;  and  though  our  knowledge  of  man  and  of 
the  state  is  far  better  and  though  our  working  hypotheses 
have  become  evolutionistic,  still  an  immense  amount  of 
our  political  thinking  remains  distinctly  of  the  eighteenth 
century  type.  Let  us  then  be  sure  to  keep  this  stratified 
structure  of  history  in  mind  as  we  proceed  with  the  present 
and  the  remaining  chapters;  for  in  a  genuine  sense  we  now 
commence  to  study  our  own  time.  The  meaning  of  my 
second  statement,  that  the  study  of  the  age  of  discovery 
will  take  us  centuries  back  as  well  as  centuries  forward, 
though  the  centuries  with  which  we  associate  the  name 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  277 

are  the  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and  seventeenth, 
will,  I  hope,  become  evident  as  we  proceed. 

2.  The  factors  giving  rise  to  the  age  of  discovery. — 
What  gave  rise  to  this  remarkable  period  of  discovery  in 
western  Europe?  A  detailed  answer  to  this  question 
would  require  a  vast  general  historical  treatise.  However, 
our  question  calls  for  only  the  most  prominent  and  general 
factors.    Yet  even  such  factors  are  numerous. 

If  we  go  back  to  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries 
as  we  must,  we  mark  at  once  the  important  fact  that 
western  Europe  was  then  coming  in  contact  with  impor- 
tant foreign  cultures,  the  Moorish  in  Spain  and  Northern 
Africa  and  in  the  Levant  the  Moorish  and  the  Greek. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  Moors  in  Spain  and  on  the  other 
hand,  the  crusaders  returning  from  the  Levant,  and  the 
European  travellers,  sailors  and  merchants  visiting  the 
East  were  all  bringing  rapidly  new  customs,  new  thoughts, 
new  learning  and  new  arts  into  western  Europe.  Thus 
Europe's  intellectual  horizon  widened.  In  particiilar,  new 
interests  were  created  in  those  parts  of  ancient  Greek 
culture  in  which  the  Arabs  were  most  interested  and  which 
they  had  preserved.  This  meant  a  new  interest  in  as- 
tronomy, in  mathematics,  in  physics  and  alchemy,  in 
medicine  and  especially  in  the  Aristotelian  philosophy  and 
science.  But  in  addition  the  intercourse  with  Arab  and 
Greek  meant  directly  the  widening  of  geographical  knowl- 
edge and  of  the  knowledge  of  the  customs  and  interests  of 
foreign  peoples.  This  manifold  widening  of  interest  in 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  was  the  genuine 
beginning  of  modern  natural  and  mathematical  sci- 
ence. 

A  second  factor  was  the  increasing  interest  in  and  appre- 
ciation of  the  ancient  Latin  literature.  Heretofore  the 
study  of  this  literature  had  been  tolerated  only  as  "  a  rob- 
bing of  the  Egyptians  by  the  children  of  God;  "  and  accord- 


278      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ingly  the  ancient  writings  had  received  a  forced  allegorical 
and  prophetic  interpretation  partly  to  excuse  the  impious 
interest.  This  budding  interest  in  the  classical  writings 
for  their  own  inherent  excellence  was  to  keep  growing 
until  in  Italy  it  blossomed  forth  into  the  magnificent  re- 
vival of  classical  learning  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries.  Italy  was  a  favorable  environment  in  which 
such  an  interest  might  grow.  It  was  so  for  two  reasons. 
First,  the  old  Roman  culture  seemed  to  the  intellectual 
Italian  to  be  that  of  his  own  ancestors  and  to  be  his  by 
right;  and  hence  there  was  not  only  a  natural  interest  but 
a  far  greater  tolerance  of  such  an  interest  in  pagan  pursuits. 
Moreover,  what  we  may  call  the  puritanism  of  medieval 
piety  was  least  noticeable  among  the  Italian  peoples. 
Second,  Italy's  growing  commercial  intercourse  with  the 
countries  of  the  Levant  from  the  thirteenth  century  on 
and  the  easy  means  of  travel  between  the  Italian  peninsula 
and  the  Levant  were  bringing  the  culture  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  as  preserved  in  the  East,  into  Italy;  and  thus  by 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  the  Itahans  had 
added  to  their  intense  interest  in  the  Latin  classics  an  equal 
interest  in  the  classics  of  ancient  Greece. 

Still,  the  most  important  factor  was  the  birth  and  growth 
of  the  spirit  of  nationalism,  included  in  which  are  many 
subsidiary  factors.  Over  medieval  Europe  there  hung  as 
a  cloud  the  tradition  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  power 
of  the  universal  church  with  her  centralized  organization 
and  her  traditions.  This  cloud  had  to  pass  away  before 
individual  freedom  of  interests  and  of  thought  and  before 
the  spirit  of  nationalism  could  thrive.  The  story  of  the 
development  of  the  modern  nations  is  long  and  involved, 
but  if  it  is  to  be  put  in  a  sentence  or  two,  these  should 
tell  of  the  growth  of  economic  Europe.  The  medieval 
community  was  economically  self-sufficient.  As  towns 
grew  trade  grew.    As  trade  increased,  capital  and  wealth 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  279 

increased.  As  these  grew  government  and  economic  in- 
terests developed  a  partnership.  As  this  partnership 
developed  into  policies,  it  consolidated  national  economic 
interests  at  home  and  gave  rise  to  efforts  to  control  markets 
abroad  and  to  protect  and  to  monopolize  trade  routes. 
The  story  of  this  growth  includes  a  major  part  of  the  his- 
tory of  Europe  from  the  days  of  Venice  and  Genoa  to  our 
own  time.  Its  consequences  were  momentous  not  only 
for  the  development  of  nationalism  as  the  political  policy 
of  modern  Europe  but  also  for  the  development  of  Europe 
intellectually  especially  in  these  centuries  of  discovery.  In 
particular,  it  favored  the  rebellion  against  the  medieval 
tradition.  That  is,  it  favored  independent  thought  and 
radical  changes  in  thought,  and  it  favored  the  appeal  to 
facts  and  to  experiment.  But  more  important  perhaps  than 
all  of  this,  was  the  fact  that  great  discoveries  were  involved 
in  the  very  economic  and  political  development  itself. 
This  development  included  the  growth  of  the  economic, 
or  industrial  arts;  and  it  is  characteristic  that  inventions 
in  these  arts  precede  the  discovery  of  the  principles  of 
pure  science  by  which  the  tools  and  methods  of  the  arts 
can  be  explained.  For  example,  we  have  already  seen  how 
far  the  practical  arts  had  advanced  in  the  Mediterranean 
period  before  any  science  began.  As  then  the  surveying 
of  land  preceded  geometry  as  a  science,  and  the  use  of 
fractions  preceded  the  science  of  fractions;  so  in  modern 
times  the  experience  (that  is,  the  trial  and  error  processes 
of  learning)  of  the  artillerists  preceded  the  scientific  study 
of  the  paths  of  projectiles.  In  a  sentence,  modern  physical 
science  arose  out  of  the  practical  arts.  Again  in  a  sentence, 
modern  geography  is  the  child  of  the  crusades  and  of 
the  medieval  commerce  precisely  as  ancient  geographical 
science  was  the  offspring  of  Punic  and  Greek  commerce. 
Finally,  chemistry,  one  of  the  youngest  of  the  sciences, 
was  preceded  by  extensive  chemical  skill  in  the  factories 


280      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  Europe,  and  mineralogy  and  geologj^  were  preceded  by 
the  arts  of  mining  and  metallurgy. 

For  further  study  read: 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  art.  Roger  Bacon;  and  arts.  Astrol- 
ogy and  Alchemy; 

Thorndike,  L.,  arts,  on  Bacon  in  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  1915,  and 
Philos.  Review,  1914; 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  I,  chapter  XV. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Roger  Bacon  Essays,  ed.  by  Little,  1914; 

Hoffding,  H.,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  1900,  Vol.  I, 
3-206; 

Muir,  M.  M.  P.,  Story  of  Alchemy  and  the  Beginnings  of 
Chemistry,  1903. 

3.  The  course  of  discovery  and  the  great  discoveries : 
(a)  "  the  revival  of  learning,"  or  the  discovery  of  the 
ancient  culture  of  Greece  and  Rome. — As  we  have  seen, 
the  medieval  intellectual  man  was  trained  in  the  Latin 
tradition  as  contained  in  the  decadent  culture  of  the  last 
centuries  of  the  western  Empire.  He  was  trained  hkewise 
in  the  church's  tradition.  Though  both  of  these  traditions 
contained  elements  of  the  culture  of  Rome  and  of  Greece 
in  their  golden  age,  the  pupil  was  viewing  the  ancient 
culture  obscured  and  distorted  as  through  a  rough  glass. 
That  is  to  say,  if  he  studied  Virgil,  he  studied  this  author 
allegorically  as  a  forerunner  of  Christianity  and  not  as  the 
true  Virgil.  If  he  studied  Plato,  he  studied  that  philoso- 
pher as  a  Neoplatonist  and  not  as  the  real  Plato.  In  short, 
the  true  Greece  and  Rome  were  unknown  and  unappre- 
ciated by  the  typical  medieval  student  of  the  ancient  Latin 
authors;  and  therefore  Europe  had  to  discover  the  true 
ancient  culture,  as  it  were,  to  dig  it  up  from  beneath  the 
debris  of  centuries.  The  discovery  was  beginning  in  the 
twelfth  century,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  growing  interest 
in  pagan  literature  for  its  own  merits.    But  the  great  dis- 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  281 

covery  came  in  the  fourteenth  century  in  northern  Italy 
and  came  especially  through  the  leadership  of  Petrarch 
{fl.  c.  1345).  At  first  the  new  interest  was  confined  to  the 
study  of  the  books  of  pagan  Rome  and  only  later  did  it  in- 
clude the  study  of  those  of  ancient  Greece.  Soon  it  in- 
cluded also  the  study  of  the  art  of  the  ancients  and  the 
desire  to  discover  and  preserve  the  monuments  of  their 
civihzation.  The  result  was  that  brilliant  period  of  nearly 
two  centuries  which  is  usually  called  the  ItaHan  Renas- 
cence. This  revival  of  learning  included  an  astonishing 
mastery  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages  and  of  genuine 
Hterary  excellence  in  Latin  writing.  It  included  the  birth  of 
all  that  we  mean  by  the  term  modern  classical  scholarship, 
the  discovery  of  the  lost  manuscripts  of  the  ancient  writ- 
ings, the  editing  of  the  ancient  authors,  the  interpretation 
of  their  thoughts,  the  working  out  of  the  history  of  their 
institutions  and  culture,  the  discovery  and  preservation 
of  their  art  and  finally  the  development  of  a  genuine 
appreciation  and  understanding  of  the  ancient  Mediter- 
ranean civilization.  This  renascence  included  also  the 
marvellous  development  of  ItaHan  literature  proper,  which 
was  to  influence  literature  in  France  and  to  be  the  chief 
stimulus  to  the  literature  of  Elizabethan  England.  From 
those  days  to  our  own,  classical  scholarship  has  progressed 
virtually  without  interruption ;  and  from  those  days  Greek 
and  Roman  thought,  hterature  and  art  have  continued 
to  influence  powerfully  modern  civilization. 

For  further  study  read: 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  I,  chapters  XVI  and 

XVII; 
Brandi,  K.,  Das  Werden  des  Renaissance,  1908; 
Creighton,  M.,  History  of  the  Papacy,  Vol.  VI,  Book  VI, 

chapters  I  and  II; 
Beard,  C,  Martin  Luther  and  the  Reformation  in  Germany, 

chapter  III; 


282      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Lindsay,  T.  M.,  History  of  the  Reformation,  1906,  Vol.  I, 
42-78; 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  art.  Erasmus. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Sandys,  J.  E.,  History  of  Classical  Scholarship,  1903-08, 
Vol.  II,  1-370; 

Robinson  and  Rolfe,  Petrarch,  the  First  Modern  Scholar  and 
Man  of  Letters,  2d  ed.,  1914; 

Loomis,  L.,  Medieval  Hellenism,  1906  (Columbia  Univer- 
sity Doctor's  Dissertation); 

Burckhardt,  J.  C,  The  Civilization  of  the  Renaissance  in 
Italy; 

Whitcomb,  M.,  A  Literary  Source  Book  of  the  Italian  Ren- 
aissance; 

Emerton,  E.,  Erasmus,  1899. 

(b)  The  discovery  of  Roman  law. — Back  in  the  days 
of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  Italian  students 
began  to  discover  the  Roman  law  as  that  law  obtained  in 
the  time  of  the  great  Roman  jurists.  The  first  study  pro- 
duced merely  glosses,  or  the  expounding  of  individual  words 
in  the  Justinian  text  and  was  limited  to  the  study  of  the 
Institutes.  However,  in  a  relatively  short  time  the  Digest 
was  included  and  the  glosses  developed  into  genuine  ex- 
positions of  the  law.  Soon  too  a  widespread  interest  in 
the  study  of  the  Roman  law  developed  and  the  great  law 
schools  of  Italy  drew  thousands  of  students  from  all  parts 
of  western  Europe.  From  Italy  jurisprudence  spread  to 
southern  France  and  to  Germany.  In  Germany  especially 
the  Roman  law  was  appealed  to  wherever  the  local  law 
failed  specifically  to  cover  the  case  before  the  higher 
court;  and  gradually  the  legal  training  which  the  study 
of  the  Roman  law  provided  and  the  wider  and  wider  use 
of  the  principles  of  this  law  in  the  courts  made  Roman  law 
virtually  the  common  law  of  the  German  states.  In 
France  the  influence  of  the  Roman  law  upon  the  common 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  283 

law  of  the  land  was  equally  great.  In  England  the  develop- 
ment of  the  common  law  and  equity  seems  at  first  sight 
to  have  been  quite  independent  of  the  study  of  the  great 
Roman  jurists;  but  the  influence  of  such  study,  though 
more  hidden  and  though  more  general,  was  probably 
present.  The  fact  that  a  great  philosophic  system  of  law 
existed  and  that  this  system  was  known  and  studied  by 
the  writers  of  the  English  text-books  and  by  the  students 
of  the  canon  law  makes  any  other  inference  seem  improba- 
ble. 

The  details  of  modern  legal  development  are  overwhelm- 
ingly numerous.  However,  amid  them  all  one  fact  stands 
out,  from  the  days  of  the  early  Italian  Renascence  to  our 
own,  the  study  of  the  Roman  law  has  been  ordinarily  a 
part  of  the  training  of  the  modern  jurist. 

For  further  study  read: 

Sohm,  R.  (transl.  Ledlie),  The  Institutes  of  Roman  Law; 

Pollock  and  Maitland,  History  of  English  Law,  2d  ed.,  1909, 
Introduction; 

Vinogradoff,  P.,  Roman  Law  in  Medieval  Europe,  1906; 

Maitland  and  Montague,  A  Sketch  of  English  Legal  His- 
tory, 1915; 

Jenks,  E.,  A  Short  History  of  English  Law,  1912; 

Jenks,  E.,  Law  and  Politics  in  the  Middle  Ages,  1898; 

Maitland,  F.  W.,  English  Law  and  the  Renaissance,  1901; 

Rashdall,  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

(c)  The  geographical  discoveries. — In  turning  next  to 
consider  the  geographical  discoveries  which  began  in  the 
days  of  the  crusades  and  reached  their  maximum  extent 
in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  and  which  have 
continued  to  our  tune,  we  come  to  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful of  the  factors  that  revolutionized  the  thought  of  Europe. 
The  detailed  story  of  geographical  exploration  during  the 
past  seven  or  eight  centuries  and  especially  during  the 


284      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

middle  part  of  that  period  does  not  concern  us  immedi- 
ately. For  our  present  purpose  it  suffices  to  point  out  the 
major  parts  of  the  story  of  man's  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  entire  surface  of  the  earth,  with  the  people  who 
dwell  in  all  lands,  with  the  customs  and  thought  of  savage 
and  barbarian,  with  the  flora  and  fauna  of  distant  lands 
and  seas  and  with  the  vestiges  of  extinct  hfe  and  culture. 
We  recall  how  medieval  Europe  was  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  eastern  Mediterranean  world,  and  even  with  the 
more  remote  East,  Russia,  Central  Asia  and  India.  The 
crusaders,  the  missionaries  and  the  merchants  of  those 
days  brought  this  to  pass.  In  the  fifteenth  century 
Portugal,  still  under  the  spell  of  the  crusader's  ideal  and 
of  the  desire  to  outflank  the  Arab  and  no  doubt  also  in 
search  of  wealth,  began  to  explore  the  western  coast  of 
Africa.  In  a  few  decades  this  enterprise  led  Portuguese 
sailors  to  the  southernmost  cape  of  Africa  and  beyond 
to  the  settlements  of  Arabian  colonies  on  the  eastern  coast; 
and  in  1497  the  greatest  feat  of  seamanship  ever  attempted 
began  in  the  departure  of  Vasco  da  Gama  from  Lisbon  for 
India.  Then  the  Mohammedan  was  completely  out- 
flanked; and  in  a  few  years  the  Portuguese  admirals  with 
their  far  superior  ships  and  seamanship  commanded  the 
Indian  trade,  and  the  old  trade  route  via  the  Levant,  with 
its  costly  and  difficult  methods  of  transit,  had  become 
hopelessly  inferior  to  the  ocean  route.  In  the  meantime 
the  search  for  a  direct  western  route  to  India,  misled  by  the 
exaggerated  estimate  of  the  longitudinal  width  of  the 
Euro- Asian  continent  obtaining  since  the  days  of  Ptolemy, 
led  to  the  discovery  of  America  and  by  1521  to  the  cir- 
cumnavigating of  the  globe.  The  remainder  of  the  story 
may  be  omitted,  wherein  Asia,  America  and  Africa  have 
been  explored  and  added  to  the  European  world,  and 
wherein  the  Atlantic  Ocean  has  become  to  the  modern 
what  the  Mediterranean  sea  was  to  the  ancient  world. 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  285 

But  the  effect  of  these  discoveries  during  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries  not  only  upon  the  commerce 
and  politics  of  Europe  but  also  upon  the  intellectual  life 
of  Europe  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 

Let  us  then  put  to  ourselves  the  question :  What  were  the 
most  prominent  effects  of  these  geographical  discoveries 
upon  the  thought  of  Europe?  (1)  There  is  the  bald  fact 
that  they  gave  Europe  a  host  of  new  interests,  or  subjects 
of  thought.  This  alone  implies  that  the  new  subjects 
competed  successfully  with  the  old  and  that  the  old  in- 
terests became  less  prominent.  And  one  of  the  evident 
facts  in  medieval  thought  was  the  almost  exclusive  theo- 
logical interest.  (2)  But  these  new  interests  were  not  mere 
rivals  of  the  old;  for  they  raised  numberless  new  and 
important  problems,  and  they  led  men  to  correct  numerous 
errors  of  the  older  learning.  For  example,  to  know  the 
customs  of  other  lands  makes  one  critical  of  the  customs  of 
one's  own  land.  To  know  the  radically  different  thoughts 
and  morals  of  other  people  makes  one  see  that  numerous 
principles  which  before  were  accepted  as  self-evident  are 
mere  assumptions.  It  was  no  accident  then  that  the  in- 
tellectual men  of  Europe  two  centuries  after  Columbus 
and  Vasco  da  Gama  questioned  almost  every  institution, 
custom,  religious  dogma  and  moral  principle  of  the  medi- 
eval tradition,  that  they  believed  men  are  the  mere  prod- 
uct of  their  environment  and  that  therefore  environment 
if  rightly  chosen  can  make  men  perfect.  It  was  no  accident 
that  they  thought  civilization  an  artificial  structure  and 
that  the  natural  man  as  opposed  to  the  civilized  man  formed 
the  basic  man  of  so  many  of  their  political,  moral,  religious 
and  educational  theories.  (3)  Finally,  these  discoveries 
filled  parts  of  Europe  with  the  very  spirit  of  adventure  and 
they  made  people  more  tolerant  and  expectant  of  change 
in  every  department  of  life.  Picture  the  effect  of  these 
early  discovered  worlds  upon  the  adventurous  members 


286      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  the  European  population,  an  effect  comparable  to  that 
of  the  discovery  of  gold  in  Australia,  California  and  the 
Klondike.  Picture  the  frequency  with  which  extraordi- 
nary news  must  have  been  received  in  the  busy  seaports  of 
western  Europe  and  the  growing  response  to  novelty  it- 
self as  a  matter  of  course.  True,  these  facts  do  not  imply 
that  all  of  Europe  became  radically  minded  or  that  any 
place  became  radically  minded  in  all  things.  But  they  do 
imply  that  the  geographical  discoveries  alone  go  far  to 
explain  the  tremendous  change  that  came  as  a  matter  of 
fact  over  the  intellectual  life  of  Europe  in  the  course  of  the 
sixteenth,  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 

For  further  studrj  read: 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  I,  7-36; 

Jacobs,  J.,  The  Story  of  Geograpliical  Discovery,  1902. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Marco  Polo,  Travels,  ed.  by  Yule,  3d  ed.,  1903; 

Travels  of  Sir  John  Mandeville,  ed.  publ.  by  Macmillan  Co.; 

Beazley,  C.  R.,  The  Dawn  of  Modern  Geography,  1897- 
1906. 

(d)  The  astronomical  discoveries. — However,  we  do 
not  depend  solely  upon  geographical  discoveries  to  explain 
the  great  change  in  Europe's  intellectual  life,  for  other 
discoveries,  revolutionary  in  their  effect  upon  man's 
thought,  were  soon  added.  These  discoveries  belong  to  the 
field  of  astronomy,  physics  and  mathematical  science,  and 
physiology. 

Any  astronomical  research  that  can  be  properly  so 
called,  had  long  ceased  in  the  western  Roman  Empire 
when  the  middle  ages  began;  and  when  astronomical  re- 
search did  begin  again  the  new  interest  came  through  the 
Moors.  In  contrast  with  the  absence  of  astronomical 
study  in  the  West,  there  had  arisen  in  the  land  of  the 
Caliphs  and  under  their  patronage  a  remarkable  interest  in 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  287 

astronomy  as  early  as  the  eighth  century.  The  Almagest 
of  Ptolemy  was  translated  and  so  also  were  the  writings 
of  other  Greek  astronomers.  Careful  observations  were 
made  and  the  observers  seriously  attempted  to  verify  and 
to  correct  the  results  of  the  Greek  astronomers.  In  ad- 
dition, better  instruments  were  constructed  and  some 
genuine  though  minor  discoveries  were  made.  From  the 
East  the  study  of  astronomy  was  carried  to  the  Moors  of 
Spain,  and  from  the  Moors  the  interest  in  astronomy  made 
its  way  into  western  Christendom  and  by  the  thirteenth 
century  its  presence  was  widespread  in  western  Europe. 
In  the  first  two  centuries  this  western  study  of  astronomy 
was  limited  to  collecting  and  compiling  such  information 
got  from  the  Greeks  and  Arabs  as  the  students  could  them- 
selves master;  but  in  the  fifteenth  century  a  dawning  in- 
dependence in  both  study  and  research  appeared;  and  by 
the  year  1500  genuine  progress  had  been  made  by  manu- 
facturing improved  instruments,  by  observing  more  ac- 
curately and  by  adding  to  the  older  information  minor 
discoveries  and  theories.  But  at  this  time  and  for  many 
decades  to  come  astronomy  failed  to  shake  off  the  prescien- 
tific  superstitions  so  long  associated  with  the  study  of  the 
stars.  Astronomers  themselves  remained  astrologers  and 
allegorists.  Indeed,  even  as  late  as  1655  Huyghens,  one 
of  Europe's  greatest  astronomers  and  most  enhghtened 
minds,  argued  that  inasmuch  as  the  number  of  planets 
and  satellites  then  known  had  reached  the  perfect  number 
twelve  there  could  be  no  more  to  discover!  Still,  beside 
this  remnant  of  prescience  we  should  put  the  record  that 
the  comet  of  1472  was  seriously  observed  as  an  object  of 
scientific  study  and  not  as  an  object  of  superstitious  terror. 
With  the  first  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century  we  come 
to  the  most  important  event  philosophically  in  the  history 
of  astronomy,  if  not  to  the  most  important  event  in  the 
history  of  philosophy.     Long  before,  the  Pythagoreans 


288      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

had  suggested  that  the  earth  itself  may  move  and  later 
Aristarchus  had  suggested  a  heliocentric  hypothesis;  but 
these  guesses  had  fallen  on  deaf  ears,  for  the  Greeks  were 
never  to  outgrow  the  prescientific  geocentric  world.  Now, 
however,  influenced  by  the  increasing  complexity  and 
difficulty  of  the  traditional  hypothesis  and  influenced  by 
reading  the  ancient  suggestions  that  the  earth  may  move, 
Copernicus  raises  the  hypothesis  that  "the  apparent  mo- 
tions of  the  celestial  bodies  are  to  a  great  extent  not  real 
motions  but  are  due  to  the  motion  of  the  earth  carrying 
the  observer  with  it."  ^  That  is  to  say,  Copernicus  had 
grasped  firmly  the  principle  of  the  relativity  of  motion  and 
by  the  use  of  this  principle  he  gave  to  his  contemporaries 
a  new  scheme  of  the  celestial  world.  He  states  this  princi- 
ple as  follows: — "For  all  change  in  position  which  is  seen, 
is  due  to  a  motion  either  of  the  observer  or  of  the  thing 
looked  at,  or  to  changes  in  the  position  of  both,  provided 
that  these  are  different.  For  when  things  are  moved 
equally  relatively  to  the  same  things,  no  motion  is  per- 
ceived, as  between  the  object  seen  and  the  observer." 

"It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  Copernicus  proved 
what  earlier  writers  had  guessed  at  or  suggested.  It 
would  perhaps  be  truer  to  say  that  he  took  up  certain 
floating  ideas,  which  were  extremely  vague  and  had  never 
been  worked  out  scientifically,  based  on  them  certain 
definite  fundamental  principles,  and  from  these  principles 
developed  mathematically  an  astronomical  system  which 
he  showed  to  be  at  least  as  capable  of  explaining  the  ob- 
served celestial  motions  as  any  existing  variety  of  the  tra- 
ditional Ptolemaic  system.  The  Copernican  system,  as 
it  left  the  hand  of  the  author,  was  in  fact  decidedly  superior 
to  its  rivals  as  an  explanation  of  ordinary  observations,  an 
advantage  which  it  owed  quite  as  much  to  the  mathemati- 

1  This  and  the  following  quotations  are  from  Berry,  A  Short 
History  of  Astronomy,  chapter  IV. 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  289 

cal  skill  with  which  it  was  developed  as  to  its  first  princi- 
ples; it  was  in  many  respects  very  much  simpler;  and  it 
avoided  certain  fundamental  difiiculties  of  the  older  sys- 
tem. It  was  however  liable  to  certain  serious  objections, 
which  were  only  overcome  by  fresh  evidence  which  was 
subsequently  brought  to  light.  For  the  predecessors  of 
Copernicus  there  was,  apart  from  variations  of  minor 
importance,  but  one  scientific  system  which  made  any 
serious  attempt  to  account  for  known  facts;  for  his  immedi- 
ate successors  there  were  two,  the  newer  of  which  would 
to  an  impartial  mind  appear  on  the  whole  the  more  satis- 
factory, and  the  further  study  of  the  two  systems,  with 
a  view  to  the  discovery  of  fresh  arguments  or  fresh  obser- 
vations tending  to  support  the  one  or  the  other,  was  im- 
mediately suggested  as  an  inquiry  of  first-rate  impor- 
tance." 

The  needs  of  the  Copernican  hypothesis  as  it  left  the 
hands  of  its  author  were  two:  first,  further  observations 
which  would  discover  facts  crucial  to  the  rival  theories; 
second,  dynamical  discoveries  that  would  explain  what 
in  those  days  seemed  the  absurdities  following  from  the 
new  doctrine.  In  spite  of  continued  progress  in  observa- 
tion during  the  next  fifty  years  the  Copernican  theory  had 
to  wait  that  long  before  it  was  definitely  established  as 
the  preferable  working  hypothesis.  The  man  whose 
discoveries  wrought  this  mighty  result  and  who  himself 
deserves  more  than  any  other  to  be  called  the  father  of 
modem  science  and  philosophy  was  Galileo  Galilei. 

Among  Galilei's  telescopic  discoveries  four  may  be 
mentioned  as  especially  supporting  the  Copernican  hy- 
pothesis. First,  was  the  discovery  of  four  satellites  of 
the  planet  Jupiter  and  of  their  revolutions.  This  fully 
proved  that  great  bodies  could  revolve  about  and  follow 
another  great  body  though  the  latter  was  itself  moving 
through  space  at  a  high  velocity,  a  doctrine  that  seemed 


290      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

to  the  traditional  thinker  absurd  and  yet  indispensable 
to  the  new  hypothesis.  Second,  the  discovery  of  the 
phases  of  Venus  made  its  relation  to  the  sun  and  its  like- 
ness to  the  moon  and  earth  evident.  Third,  the  discovery 
of  the  irregular  surface  of  the  moon,  and  fourth,  the  dis- 
covery of  sun  spots  and  through  their  motion  the  discovery 
of  the  probable  revolution  of  the  sun  itself  were  fatal 
blows  to  the  ancient  belief  in  the  changelessness  of  the 
heavens  and  added  evidence  of  the  similarity  of  the  ce- 
lestial and  the  terrestrial  worlds. 

Among  Galilei's  discoveries  in  dynamics  were  two  of  the 
utmost  importance  in  giving  modern  Europe  her  cosmol- 
ogy. These  were  the  laws  of  the  acceleration  of  falling 
bodies  and  the  principle  that  a  moving  body  will  if  unim- 
peded move  in  a  straight  line  with  uniform  velocity. 
They  are  themselves  very  simple  and  were  discovered  by 
means  of  very  simple  experiments;  but  they  are  the  basis 
historically  of  the  entire  modern  astronomy  and  me- 
chanics, and  they  are  the  beginning  of  the  greatest  intel- 
lectual revolution  man  has  ever  witnessed. 

Though  the  full  account  of  the  development  of  modern 
astronomy  from  Galilei  to  Newton,  from  Newton  to  La- 
place and  from  Laplace  to  our  own  day  includes  numerous 
names  and  numberless  details,  it  is  astonishing  how  brief 
the  story  can  be  made.  The  discovery  by  Kepler  of  the 
paths  of  the  planets  and  of  the  law  that  the  line  joining 
sun  and  planet  sweeps  through  equal  areas  in  equal  times, 
and  the  discoveries  associated  especially  with  the  name  of 
Huyghens  (resulting  from  experiments  with  the  pendulum 
and  with  colliding  bodies),  these  discoveries  together  with 
better  mathematical  methods  and  more  accurate  and  more 
numerous  astronomical  observations  made  the  astronomy 
of  Newton  possible.  Through  Newton  Europe  received 
the  virtually  complete  basis  for  gravitational  astronomy, 
that  is  to  say,  for  a  dynamical  explanation  of  the  observed 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  291 

facts  of  the  solar  system.  All  that  was  essential  to  begin  to 
extend  this  to  the  whole  sidereal  system  was  the  later 
discovery  of  the  revolution  of  double  stars.  The  gravita- 
tional astronomy  raised  in  the  minds  of  a  Kant  and  a 
Laplace  the  further  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  solar 
system  and  led  them  to  formulate  the  Nebular  Hypothesis. 
This  hypothesis  may  be  largely  speculative  and  only  of 
secondary  importance  to  astronomy,  but  its  philosophical 
importance  is  immense.  Thus  within  two  hundred  years 
of  Galilei  men  not  only  could  think  of  the  solar  world  rig- 
orously in  terms  of  dynamics  but  had  a  dynamical  theory 
even  of  its  origin.  To  this  stupendous  achievement  of 
the  human  mind  the  nineteenth  century  through  the  spec- 
troscope has  added  the  further  achievement  of  giving  us  a 
physics  and  chemistry  of  the  starry  world  and  an  easy 
method  of  ascertaining  a  star's  approach  toward  us  or 
recession  from  us  and  the  velocity  of  this  approach  or 
recession.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Berry,  Short  History  of  Astronomy,  76-409; 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  103-148, 

167-183; 
Galileo,  Dialogues  Concerning  Two  New  Sciences,  transl.  by 
Crew  and  Salvio,  1914. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Ball,  R.  S.,  Great  Astronomers,  2d  ed.,  1907; 
Lodge,  0.,  Pioneers  of  Science,  1893; 

^  Among  the  most  prominent  names  of  the  fathers  of  our  modem 
cosmology,  so  far  as  it  is  astronomical,  are  the  following: — Copernicus 
(Ji.  c.  1515);  Galilei  (fl.  c.  1605);  Kepler  {fl.  c.  1610);  Huyghens  {fl.  c. 
1670);  Newton  [fl.  c.  1685);  Halley  (fl.  c.  1695);  Bradley  {fl-  c  1735); 
Kant  {fl.  c.  1765);  Lagrange  {fl.  c.  1775);  Laplace  {fl.  c.  1790);  Wil- 
liam Herschel  {fl.  c.  1780).  With  Herschel,  the  discoverer  of  the 
motion  of  double  stars,  and  with  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  our  brief  list  must  close  as  the  names  become  too  numerous 
and  can  be  got  best  from  a  history  of  astronomy. 


292      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Whewell,  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences; 
Gierke,  A.  M.,  Popular  History  of  Astronomy  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century. 

(e)  The  mathematical  discoveries. — As  Greek  astron- 
omy was  studied  by  the  Arabs  ^  and  carried  by  them  to 
the  western  world,  so  also  was  Greek  mathematics.  In 
transmitting  to  the  West  arithmetic,  algebra,  trigonom- 
etry and  geometry  the  Arabs  added  little  to  the  informa- 
tion they  had  received  from  their  teachers,  the  Greeks;  but 
they  did  thoroughly  appreciate  and  understand  the  Greek 
mathematicians  and  so  were  themselves  excellent  teachers. 
This  transmission  took  place  in  the  twelfth,  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries.  In  the  fifteenth  century  the  original 
writings  of  the  Greek  mathematicians  were  coming  into 
western  Europe  directly  from  Constantinople,  so  that 
in  this  century  both  Greek  and  Arabic  mathematics  were 
easily  accessible  to  European  students.  With  the  six- 
teenth century  modern  mathematics  began;  but  this 
beginning  may  be  summed  up  in  the  sentence,  Greek 
mathematics  was  merely  extended;  whereas  with  the  sev- 
enteenth century  began  that  revolutionary  development 
of  modern  mathematics  which  has  brought  the  science  far 
beyond  the  bounds  of  the  Greek  mathematical  sciences. 
Most  briefly  summarized,  the  following  five  stages  may  be 
discerned  in  the  history  of  modern  mathematics  since 
1600:  first  the  invention^  and  development  of  analytic 
geometry;  second,  the  invention  of  the  calculus;  ^  third,  the 
development  of  mechanics  as  an  exact  mathematical  sci- 

^  The  Arabs  received  mathematical  information  from  the  Hindoos 
also,  especially  the  decimal  notation  of  numbers. 

^  Especially  associated  with  Descartes  and  the  date  1637.  Cj.  Ball, 
A  Short  History  of  Mathematics,  pp.  232  ff. 

'  Especially  associated  with  Newton  and  Leibniz  and  the  dates 
1666  and  1674. 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  293 

ence;  ^  fourth,  the  development  of  mathematical  physics;  ^ 
and  fifth,  the  immense  development  of  pure  mathematics 
in  the  nineteenth  century.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Ball,  A  Short  History  of  Mathematics,  123-229,  and  espec. 

230-410; 
Cajori,  History  of  Mathematics,  84-137,  and  espec.  138- 
403. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Mach,  E.  (transl.  McCormack),  Science  of  Mechanics; 
Cantor,  M.,  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Geschichte  der  Mathe- 
matik. 

(f)  The  physical,  chemical  and  physiological  discov- 
eries.— From  the  late  sixteenth  century  to  the  dawn  of 
the  nineteenth  century  was  an  age  also  of  great  discoveries 
in  the  realms  of  physical  science  and  of  physiological 
science,  but  especially  in  the  former  realm.  Even  the  brief- 
est summary  of  these  numerous  discoveries  is  beyond  the 
scope  of  a  paragraph.  Suffice  it  then  to  say  that  besides 
dynamics,  which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  becomes  thor- 

*  Especially  associated  in  its  earlier  stages  with  Huyghens  and 
Newton  and  in  its  completion  with  Laplace  and  Lagrange,  late  in 
the  eighteenth  century. 

2  Commenced  by  Huyghens  and  Newton  in  their  theories  of  Ught. 

*  Among  the  prominent  founders  of  modem  mathematics  during 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  were  the  following: — 
Descartes  {fi.  c.  1635);  Cavalieri  (fl.  c.  1640)  who  enunciated  the 
principles  of  indivisibles,  a  forerunner  of  the  integral  calculus;  Wallis 
(ft.  c.  1645)  who  systematized  and  extended  the  methods  and  re- 
sults of  Descartes  and  Cavalieri;  Pascal  {fl.  c.  1660)  and  Fermat  {fl.  c. 
1641)  with  whose  names  is  especially  associated  the  theory  of  proba- 
bility; Huyghens  {fl.  c.  1670);  Newton  {fl.  c.  1685);  Leibniz  {fl.  c. 
1685);  D'Alembert  {fl.  c.  1755)  contributed  especially  to  mechanics; 
Euler  {fl.  c.  1745)  revised,  systematized  and  extended  analysis; 
Lagrange  {fl.  c.  1775)  contributed  to  many  branches  of  mathematics, 
especially  to  the  calculus  of  variations  and  to  mechanics;  finally 
Laplace  {fl.  c.  1790)  celestial  mechanics  and  the  theory  of  probabiUty. 


294      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

oughly  established  as  a  really  complete  science  before  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  following  sciences  become  estab- 
lished at  least  in  their  beginnings  by  the  end  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  the  sciences  of  sound,  of  optics  and  light, 
of  magnetism  and  electricity,  the  science  of  chemistry  and 
the  science  of  physiology.  Among  the  many  discoveries 
that  may  be  singled  out  as  having  had  marked  philosophi- 
cal importance  the  following  are  a  few:  the  discoveries 
that  led  to  the  Newtonian  mechanics  and  gravitational 
astronomy  (from  Gahlei  to  Newton);  the  discovery  of 
the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  the  related  discoveries 
of  glands  and  ducts  in  the  mammals  leading  men  to  think 
of  the  living  body  as  a  machine  (Harvey,  1628);  the  dis- 
covery of  microscopic  organisms  (Leeuwenhoek,  1683); 
the  discovery  of  the  paths  travelled  by  light  leading  to 
the  formulation  of  the  principle  of  least  action  (Snell, 
fl.  c.  1630;  Descartes,^,  c.  1635,  and  Fermat,  ^.  c.  1641); 
the  discovery  that  light  travels  with  finite  velocity  (Romer, 
fl.  c.  1685;  Bradley,  fl.  c.  1730);  the  discovery  of  the  un- 
dulatory  theory  of  light  (Huyghens,  Young) ;  the  discovery 
of  the  composition  of  white  hght  (Newton,  1666) ;  the  dis- 
coveries gradually  revealing  relations  betw.een  magnetism 
and  electricity  (Oersted,  1819) ;  the  electromagnetic  theory 
of  hght  (Faraday,  1845);  the  discoveries  in  chemistry  that 
led  toward  the  entertaining  of  the  principle  of  the  conser- 
vation of  mass  and  of  the  atomic  theory  (Dalton,  1803); 
and  finally  the  discoveries  that  step  by  step  were  leading 
men  to  conceive  the  notion  of  energy  as  an  ultimate  physi- 
cal entity  along  with  matter  and  to  think  of  universal 
principles  of  energy.  This  goal  is  truly  reached  only  in  the 
nineteenth  century  in  the  discovery  of  the  mechanical 
equivalent  of  heat  (Joule,  fl.  c.  1850)  and  in  the  discovery 
of  the  principles  of  the  conservation  and  dissipation 
of  energy.  These  discoveries  were  in  general  related  to  the 
advancing  knowledge  in  the  science  of  heat,  a  science  that 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  295 

began  with  Newton  but  became  thoroughly  estabhshed 
only  in  the  nineteenth  century.  (Carnot,  fl.  c.  1835; 
Mayer,  fl.  c.  1855;  Joule,  fl.  c.  1850;  Helmholtz,/.  c.  1860; 
Clausius,  fl.  c.  1860;  Thomson,  W.,  fl.  c.  1865;  Rankine, 
fl.  c.  1860.)  1 

For  further  study  read: 

Whetham,  Foundations  of  Science  (The  People's  Books) ; 

Cajori,  F.,  History  of  Physics,  1916; 

Thorpe,  E.,  History  of  Chemistry,  1909,  espec.  Vol.  I; 

Foster,  M.,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Physiology,  1901; 

Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  art.  Academies, 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Mach,  E.,  Science  of  Mechanics; 

Duhem,  P.,  L'Evolution  des  Theories  Physiques,  1896; 

Whewell,  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences; 

Omstein,  M.,  Role  of  the  Scientific  Societies  in  the  Seven- 
teenth Century,  1913  (Columbia  University  Doctor's 
Dissertation) ; 

Dannemann,  F.,  Die  Naturwissenschaften  in  ihrer  Ent- 
wicklung; 

Gerland  und  Traumuller,  Geschichte  der  physikalischen 
Experimentierkunst,  1899; 

Miall,  L.  C,  History  of  Biology,  1911. 

^  Among  the  numerous  fathers  of  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
century  physical  science  (an  acquaintance  with  whose  names  and 
work  can  be  got  from  Cajori's  History  of  Physics  and  Thorpe's 
History  of  Chemistry)  I  would  call  the  attention  of  the  student  of 
the  history  of  philosophy  especially  to  the  following:  Galilei  (fl. 
1605);  Gilbert  (fl.  1580);  Snell  (fl.  1620,  refraction  of  hght);  Des- 
cartes {fl.  1635);  Torricelli  {fl.  1640);  Pascal  {fl.  1655,  pressure  of 
liquids);  Huyghens  {fl.  1670,  light);  Boyle  {fl.  1670,  heat  and  one  of 
the  fathers  of  chemistry) ;  Newton  {fl.  1685,  astronomy,  light  and 
heat);  Romer  {fl.  1685,  finite  velocity  of  hght);  Black  {fl.  1770); 
Priestley  {fl.  1775);  Lavoisier  {fl.  1785);  and  Dalton  {fl.  1805)  (fathers 
of  chemistry);  du  Fay  {fl.  1735);  Franklin  {fl.  1750);  Cavendish 
{fl.  1770);  Coulomb,  Galvani,  and  Volta  {fl.  c.  1770)  (fathers  of 
science  of  electricity);  and  Young  {fl.  1815,  undulatory  theory  of 
light). 


296      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

(g)  Psychology  and  political  and  social  science. — 
From  the  sixteenth  century  human  nature,  individual  and 
social,  has  been  the  object  of  most  intense  study.  This 
study,  however,  has  been  slowest  in  outgrowing  the  pre- 
conceptions and  the  prejudices  inherited  from  the  middle 
ages,  and  has  only  gradually  changed  from  a  speculative 
argument  into  a  genuinely  inductive  or  experimental  re- 
search. Indeed  it  had  not  succeeded  in  so  doing  until 
late  in  the  nineteenth  century.  In  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries,  therefore,  this  field  of 
study  was  far  less  a  field  of  verified  discovery  than  was  the 
field  of  physical  science.  Rather  it  was  a  field  of  growing 
insight  and  enlightenment  amid  partisanship  and  inherited 
conceptions.  However,  it  would  be  grossly  misleading 
not  to  emphasize  the  vast  importance  of  this  speculation 
in  the  practical  and  philosophical  life  of  the  western  world. 
By  hard  thinking  and  by  a  growing  insight  into  the  nature 
of  man,  society  and  the  state  theorists  themselves  outgrew 
and  enabled  intellectual  men  to  outgrow  medieval  psychol- 
ogy and  political,  social  and  economic  theory.  In  short, 
great  thinkers  led  the  thought  of  Europe  through  the 
mighty  political,  economic,  social  and  educational  changes 
which  the  past  three  centuries  have  witnessed,  through 
the  age  of  absolute  and  autocratic  government  and 
education  to  the  days  of  constitutional  monarchy,  de- 
mocracy, humanitarian  legislation  and  utilitarian  educa- 
tion. 

Long  and  complex  as  is  the  detailed  story  of  the  growth 
of  these  sciences  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  a  few  major  facts  stand  in  relief  and  are  philo- 
sophically most  important.  The  prescientific  and  religious 
conceptions  of  man's  mind  and  of  human  society  and  po- 
litical institutions  were  quite  outgrown  by  the  great 
thinkers  of  these  two  centuries.  But  the  resulting  secular 
beliefs  were  far  from  well  founded.     These  beliefs  were 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  297 

still  in  principle  the  beliefs  of  the  Greek  thinkers.  Man's 
mental  nature  was  not  really  understood  and  could  not  be 
until  Darwinism  revealed  the  relation  of  man's  mind  to 
that  of  the  brutes,  until  the  physiology  and  the  microscopic 
anatomy  of  the  nervous  system  gave  some  insight  into  the 
working  of  the  human  mind,  and  until  experimental 
research  began  in  psychology.  Before  this  time  psychology 
had  to  remain  a  more  or  less  artificial  analysis  of  conscious- 
ness, a  system  of  guesses  by  clever  introspectionists,  and 
a  series  of  speculations  by  enlightened  students  of  human 
hfe.  The  most  important  discoveries  made  were  the  role 
played  in  education  by  the  process  called  the  association 
of  ideas,  and  the  enormous  extent  to  which  the  adult  mind 
of  man  is  the  product  of  environment.  On  the  one  hand, 
these  discoveries  favored  the  growing  liberalism,  empiri- 
cism, and  subjectivism  in  philosophic  thought,  as  we  shall 
see  in  later  chapters.  On  the  other  hand,  they  tended 
to  make  thoughtful  men  outgrow  the  older  Greek  behef 
in  the  consensus  gentium,  in  the  law  of  nature  and  in  gen- 
eral in  a  universal  God-given  philosophy  implanted  in 
man's  mind  at  birth. 

During  these  centuries  society  continued  to  be  thought 
of  as  an  artificial  conventional  organization,  founded  in 
fact  or  in  principle  by  a  contract  between  its  members. 
It  continued  to  be  thought  of  as  based  logically  upon  "the 
law  of  nature,"  and  as  essentially  a  rational  enterprise. 
In  short,  it  continued  to  be  conceived  in  principle  as  the 
Greek  thinkers  of  old  would  have  conceived  it.  This  had 
to  be  so,  until  the  modern  thinker  became  an  evolutionist, 
until  he  understood  better  the  instinctive  nature  of  man 
and  brute  and  until  through  a  wider  acquaintance  with 
fact  he  won  some  insight  into  the  real  factors  at  work  in 
the  origin,  development,  and  transformation  of  society, 
of  governments,  of  economic  customs  and  institutions, 
and  of  jurisprudence.    And  this  knowledge  really  began 


298      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

to  come  to  students  of  human  nature  and  society  only  in 
the  nineteenth  century. 

For  further  study  read: 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  I,  198-218; 

Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  chapter  V. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Dessoir,  M.  (transl.  Fisher),  Outlines  of  the  History  of 
Psychology,  1912; 

Klemm,  0.  (transl.  Wilm  and  Pintner),  History  of  Psychol- 
ogy,  1914; 

Dunning,  W.  A.,  History  of  Political  Theory  from  Luther  to 
Montesquieu,  1905; 

Sidgwick,  H.,  The  Development  of  European  Polity,  1903; 

Gooch,  G.  P.,  English  Democratic  Ideas  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century,  1898; 

Scherger,  G.  L.,  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Liberty,  1904. 

4.  The  broadening  of  the  field  of  discovery  and  of 
science. — A  most  important  aspect  of  the  development 
of  science  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
is  the  ever  widening  and  rapidly  widening  field  of  man's 
scientific  interest.  This  can  be  seen  by  comparing  the 
limited  field  of  research  in  the  days  of  Galilei  with  the  wide 
field  of  research  two  centuries  later.  In  the  age  of  Galilei 
anatomy,  botany,  physiology,  psychology  and  political 
theory  were  merely  beginning,  so  was  chemistry,  so  were 
dynamics  and  physics,  mathematics  and  astronomy,  that 
is,  they  were  merely  beginning  as  modern  sciences.  And 
at  first  the  problems  which  they  raised  were  few  and  rel- 
atively narrow.  Whereas  by  the  end  of  the  two  centuries 
many  of  these  sciences  had  become  widely  extended  and 
well  established ;  and  in  addition  several  new  sciences  had 
commenced  as  modern  sciences,  such  as  mineralogy, 
geology,  paleontology,  anthropology  and  economics. 

But  extensive  as  had  become  the  field  of  science  by  the 
era  of  Napoleon  it  seems  narrow  indeed  when  compared 


THE  AGE  OF  DISCOVERY  299 

with  the  field  of  science  to-day;  for  this  widening  of  the 
field  of  science  and  this  enormous  multiphcation  of  the 
problems  and  the  departments  within  the  major  sciences 
has  continued  in  almost  geometrical  progression  during 
the  nineteenth  century.  With  the  exception  of  the  mathe- 
matical sciences,  we  may  even  say  that  the  other  sciences 
had  merely  their  beginning  in  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries.  Wonderful  as  were  these  centuries  they 
but  led  to  a  far  more  wonderful  period  of  rapid  scientific 
development,  the  past  one  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

5.  The  conflict  of  science  with  prescientific  and  me- 
dieval belief  and  custom. — From  the  days  of  the  six- 
teenth century  the  new  learning,  the  new  discoveries  and 
the  new  theories  have  often  come  into  bitterest  conflict 
with  the  older  beliefs  and  customs.  The  new  anatomy 
and  phj^siology  and  the  new  astronomy  were  at  the  be- 
ginning bitterly  opposed  as  heresy.  Galilei  was  condemned 
by  the  Inquisition  and  compelled  to  deny  that  the  earth 
moves.  From  the  days  of  Galilei  the  struggle  toward  a 
frankly  scientific  conception  of  all  that  concerns  on  the 
one  hand  cosmology,  and  on  the  other  hand  man's  origin, 
his  history,  his  nature,  his  place  in  the  cosmos,  his  morality, 
his  political  and  social  institutions  and  his  religion  has  met 
with  bitter  opposition.  One  battle  after  another  has  been 
won  by  science  over  prescience,  in  period  after  period, 
until  the  present  time,  when  we  feel  that  the  struggle  is 
past.  But  in  so  feeling  we  should  not  forget  that  only 
yesterday  the  Darwinian  theory  had  a  bitter  struggle  to 
win  men  from  older  beliefs  and  that  to-daj^  Biblical  science 
is  still  in  the  midst  of  a  similar  struggle.  If  then  we  say 
that  science  has  in  general  won  the  recognition  of  her  right 
to  be,  let  us  not  fail  to  qualify  this  assertion  by  the  state- 
ment that  science  has  still  much  work  to  do  to  win  the 
western  world  entirely  from  prescientific  belief  and  cus- 
tom.    Yes,   there  still  remains  unfinished  the  task  of 


800      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

educating  even  the  intellectual  classes  to  a  genuinely  and 
completely  scientific  attitude  toward  all  problems  open 
to  scientific  research. 

For  further  study  read: 

Bury,  A  History  of  Freedom  of  Thought  (Home  University 
Library) ; 

White,  A.  D.,  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  The- 
ology in  Christendom; 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  Ra- 
tionalism in  Europe; 

Burr,  G.  L.,  Witch  Persecutions,  1896; 

Schaff,  P.,  The  Progress  of  Religious  Freedom  as  shown  in 
the  History  of  Toleration  Acts,  1889. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE   MODERN   PHILOSOPHICAL   MOVEMENTS 

1.  Introductory. — Already  in  the  sixteenth  century  the 
age  of  discovery  was  beginning  to  witness  great  philosophi- 
cal changes  in  the  intellectual  life  of  Europe.  Common  to 
these  changes  was  a  revolt  against  a  large  part  of  the 
medieval  conception  of  the  world,  of  the  state  and  of  life. 
First,  was  the  revolt  against  medieval  thought  and  feeling 


supremacy  oi'  the  state  over  the  church.  Third,  was  the 
religious  and  moral  revolt  seen  in  the  Protestant  rebellion 
against  tlielnedieval  chuf cE  and  in  the  effort  of_the^churclL 
to  reform  herself  from  withml  .blnally,  was  the  revolt 
against"lnMievaTscience  and  thought  that  may  be  called 
afTtParistoteliamsm.  i'tiis  last  revolt  included  the  reject- 
ing of  the  ancient  astronomy  and  physics  and  the  rising 
of  experimental  research  and  exploration  with  their  spirit 
of  self-confidence  and  independence  of  authority.^ 

However,  we  shall  do  well  to  begin  our  account  of  the 
first  great  philosophical  movement  of  modern  times  as  that 
movement  appears  in  its  full  strength  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  thus  confine  our  story  of  modern  philosophi- 
cal development  to  the  past  three  hundred  years. ^ 

1  It  included  also  some  attempts  to  find  through  speculation  at 
once  a  new  conception  of  the  world  and  of  life.  One  of  the  most 
celebrated  of  these  attempts  was  the  naturalistic  pantheism  of 
Giordano  Bruno  (burnt  at  the  stake  in  Rome  by  order  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion 1600). 

2  Here  a  statement  previously  made,  warrants  repeating.  In  our 
study  from  this  point  on  we  begin  to  present  literally  the  philosophi- 

301 


302      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  II,  chapters  IV,  VII, 

IX-XII,  XIX; 
Burckhardt,  The  Civilization  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy, 

Part  III; 
Lindsay,  T.  M.,  History  of  the  Reformation,  1906; 
Beard,  C,  The  Reformation  of  the  Sixteenth  Century  in  its 

Relation  to  Modern  Thought  and  Knowledge  (Hibbert 

Lectures,  1883). 

2.  The  survival  of  prescientific  thought. — Before  men- 
tioning the  first  of  these  modern  movements  I  must  stop 
for  a  moment  to  point  out  that  which  has  changed  least, 
that  which  has  remained  still  the  basis  of  our  intellectual 
life.  In  the  middle  ages  European  thought  and  custom, 
were  almost  entirely  prescientific  and  barbaric  and  with 
the  coming  of  science  and  of  critical  thought  this  barbarism 
did  not  immediately  disappear  nor  has  it  yet  completely 
disappeared.  Thus  to  this  very  day  an  underlying  stratum 
of  barbaric  and  prescientific  thought,  belief  and  custom 
remains  in  many  parts  of  our  social,  political,  religious  and 
intellectual  hfe.^    The  preceding  chapter  has  pointed  out 

cal  thought  of  to-day;  for  though  one  movement  has  been  followed 
by  others,  the  older  movement  has  also  remained  as  a  permanent 
force  in  the  combined  or  resultant  movement.  Thus  it  is  distinctly 
advisable  to  present  modem  philosophy  in  terms  of  movements 
instead  of  periods.  Moreover,  in  so  doing  we  shall  not  neglect  al- 
together the  fact  that  there  have  been  periods,  because  we  shall 
take  each  movement  up  in  the  order  in  which  it  began  to  make  itself 
clearly  powerful  in  modern  European  thought. 

1  Here  I  refer  even  to  the  intellectual  classes.  The  non-intellectual 
majority  are  of  course  prescientific  in  most  matters  of  life.  Any 
barbarian  can  board  a  railway  train  and  ride  on  it  or  can  use  the 
tools  and  methods  of  civilization  without  understanding  a  steam 
engine  or  the  principles  of  mechanics,  or  without  being  much  wiser 
than  his  medieval  forefathers.  Hence  the  fact  that  the  masses  use 
modem  tools  and  go  to  modem  hospitals  and  graduate  from  the 
elementary  schools  does  not  imply  that  a  revolution  has  taken  place 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS     303 

the  intense  struggle  that  modern  science  has  had  to  wage 
with  the  group  mind  and  the  inertia  she  has  had  to  over- 
come wherever  she  has  asked  the  group  to  change  some  old 
or  primitive  belief  and  custom.  And  to  this  fact  we  may 
add  that  myth,  magic  and  animism  are  to  this  day  part 
of  the  bottom  stratum  of  European  thought.  For  example, 
animism  is  stilLlddespread  in  our  interpretation  of  human  "^^  f*  ' 
life  and  thought ;  magic  is  still  an  important  part  of  popu- 
lar medicine;  the  criminal  is  still  thought  of  much  as  he  is 
conceived  by  the  barbarians;  the  methods  and  curricula 
of  our  schools  and  colleges  still  presuppose  prescientific 
theories  of  the  mind  and  of  its  ways  of  working;  ethics  and 
religion,  even  among  the  intellectual  classes,^  still  manifest 
much  that  is  distinctly  primitive.  All  of  this  is  said  in  no 
spirit  of  criticism  or  of  impatience  but  simply  as  a  state- 
ment of  important  historical  and  psychological  fact.  No 
epoch  in  the  most  civilized  of  peoples  has  failed  to  exhibit 
a  vast  substratum  of  the  primitive  in  their  thoughts  and 
customs  and  beliefs;  and  as  far  as  we  can  foresee  the  his- 
tory of  human  society  such  a  vast  primitive  substratum 
will  continue  to  be  present.^    Indeed,  to  explain  the  mind 

making  them  intellectually  superior  to  prescientific  man.  In  short, 
an  examination  of  the  intellectual  attainments,  or  of  the  yhiloso-phy  of 
the  average  man  to-day,  would  reveal  a  prescientific  man,  a  pre- 
scientific man  not  in  the  arts  and  tools  he  uses  but  for  the  greater  -part 
a  prescientific  man  in  the  comprehension  of  his  environment  and  of 
himself. 

^The  term  "intellectual  class"  is  of  necessity  ambiguous.  We 
might  arbitrarily  define  it  as  that  ten  per  cent  of  the  population 
which  is  most  intellectual  and  best  instructed.  If  we  made  it  twenty- 
five  per  cent  the  barbaric  element  in  modern  thought  would  be  vast. 
Even  if  we  made  it  one  per  cent  the  statements  made  above  would 
probably  remain  true. 

"^  My  ground  for  this  last  assertion  is  the  psychological  belief  that 
at  least  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  population  has  not  the  innate 
intellectual  capacities  really  to  acquire  a  good  secondary  school 
training  in  science,  at  least  not  by  our  present  methods  of  instruction. 


304      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

of  any  modern  thinker  we  have  to  presuppose  instincts 
but  httle  modified  by  instruction,  subconscious  traits  but 
sHghtly  integrated  with  the  system  of  thoughtful  procedure 
and  habits  socially  and  blindly  inherited  through  the 
inert  group-mind  of  the  society  in  which  the  thinker  has 
been  reared.  Moreover,  scientific  research  never  has  as 
its  field  of  exploration  the  universe,  or  the  totahty  of 
possible  objects  of  study,  but  makes  its  way  slowly  from 
some  center  of  interest  to  other  centers  and  so  but  gradu- 
ally lengthens  the  diameter  of  its  total  field  of  study. 
In  the  meantime  much  that  remains  without  the  field  of 
science  is  conceived,  even  by  intellectual  men,  in  prescien- 
tific  and  socially  inherited  ways. 

Hence  in  beginning  to  study  the  modern  philosophical 
movements  which  during  the  past  three  hundred  years 
have  been  forming  the  philosophical  thought  of  to-day 
and  have  been  indeed  causing  immense  changes  in  our 
intellectual  life,  let  us  not  forget  this  vast  substratum  to 
our  thought,  a  substratum  that  has  persisted  through  the 
course  of  ages  and  that  is  in  part  at  least  older  even  than 
the  middle  ages.  This  is  the  first  stratum  of  modern  Euro- 
pean thought  and  on  it  rest  the  strata  built  by  the  great 
forces  and  disturbances,  the  stresses  and  strains,  the 
erosions  and  deposits  that  figuratively  speaking  have 
brought  about  modern  progress. 

For  further  study  read: 

Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe; 

White,  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology. 

3.  The  modem  philosophical  movements. — Two  major 
philosophical  movements  reveal  themselves  in  the  develop- 
ment of  modern  religion  and  thought;  first^ the  medieval 
romantic  or  mystic  movement  which  for  afewcenturies, 
and  especially  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  was  in  a  sort  of  abeyance  but  which  became 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS    305 

grominentagain  in  thenineteenth  century;  and  second,  the 
.scientifig,  classicaiorjntellectualistic  movement  wKichJia^ 
become  promment  by  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and  whicTi  remained  most  powerful  during  the  seventeentTi 
and  eighteenth  centuries. 

These  two  movements  differ  fundamentally.  In  origin, 
romanticism  is  medieval,  northern  and  Christian;  intel^ 
jectualism  is  classic,  Mediterranean  and  pagan.  Emo- 
tionally, romanticism  is  filled  with  a  sense  of  man's  im- 
perfection and  helplessness,  with  fear  and  love,  with  the 
feeling  of  the  need  of  self-discipline  and  with  a  feeling  of 
the  essential  mystery  of  life.  In  contrast,  intellectualism  is 
filled  with  a  confidence  in  man's  perfectibility  and  power 
of  self-help,  with  a  zeal  for  humanitarianism  and  for  the 
amelioration  of  human  fortune,  with  little  sense  of  sin  and 
with  little  appreciation  of  humility  and  spirituality. 
Intellectually,  romanticism  has  little  interest  in  theory, 
in  the  exact  sciences,  in  the  general  and  the  abstract; 
whereas  intellectualism  is  confident  of  theory,  is  rationalis- 
tic, and  is  optimistic  regarding  man's  ability  to  explain 
and  to  understand  the  world,  man  and  his  place  in  the 
world.  Religiously,  romanticism  is  mystic,  is  filled  with 
love,  gentleness  and  humility,  is  other-worldly  and  es- 
sentially pessimistic.  In  contrast,  intellectualism  is  opti- 
mistic, worldly  and  naturalistic.  In  politics,  romanticism 
is  evolutionistic  and  often  reactionary,  whereas  intellec- 
tualism is  revolutionistic,  democratic  and  Utopian.  Ro- 
manticism has  a  deep  interest  in  history  and  the  past, 
whereas  intellectualism  is  interested  in  the  future  and  is 
forgetful  of  the  past  and  its  own  indebtedness  to  the  past. 
In  art,  romanticism  gives  expression  to  its  wealth  of  re- 
ligious emotion,  to  its  love  of  nature,  history,  and  the 
lowly  life  of  the  peasant,  to  its  interest  in  human  love  and 
passion,  and  to  its  enjoyment  of  rich  sensory  experience. 
In  contrast,  intellectualism  is  classic,  favors  order  and 


306      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

form  and  purity  of  style,  is  interested  in  the  city  and  its 
life,  and  is  distinctly  non-emotional. 

In  philosophical  thought  intellectualism  and  romanti- 
cism diiier  correspondingly.  Intellectualism  is  confident 
of  man's  power  to  explain  and  to  understand  the  world  and 
himself,  for  the  world  is  essentially  a  world  that  can  be 
understood.  It  is  a  naturalistic  world,  a  world  that  can 
be  explained  in  terms  of  science.  It  is  a  rational  world, 
a  world  whose  grounds  can  be  discovered  and  whose 
modes  follow  logically  from  these  grounds.  In  short,  it  is 
a  world  that  can  be  logically  deduced  from  principles. 
Again,  it  is  a  world  of  law,  or  causality.  Its  laws  have 
no  exceptions.  There  can  be  no  miracles,  no  mysteries 
and  no  indeterminate^factors.  Whateverliappens  has  to 
happen  and  under  the  same  conditions  the  same  thing 
always  comes  to  pass,  and  these  conditions  can  be  dis- 
covered. Finally,  to  the  intellectualist  it  is  a  world  of 
mathematical  and  logical  necessity.  It  is  not  a  teleological 
world.  It  is  not  governed  by  outside  agents  nor  is  it 
designed  for  some  end.  Man  and  his  interests  play  but  an 
infinitesimal  part  in  its  infinite  history.  It  is  a  world  for 
hard-headed  rational  men  and  not  for  sentimentalists. 

To  the  intellectualist  man's  mind  and  human  society 
are  likewise  rational  and  natural.  They  are  fundamentally 
no  more  mysterious  than  is  the  solar  system  of  which  they 
are  inhabitants.  Science  can  therefore  explain  both  mind 
and  society  and  deduce  their  nature  and  states  from  the 
same  principles  by  means  of  which  other  forms  of  exist- 
ence are  explained.  The  ideal  life  of  man  and  of  society 
is  accordingly  a  worldly  life  and  a  rational  life.  Man's 
interests  begin  and  end  here  upon  earth.  His  supreme  de- 
sire should  be  to  make  the  most  of  what  a  command  of 
nature  and  of  himself  through  science  renders  possible. 
He  should  be  governed  by  reason  and  so  should  society; 
for  society  is  fundamentally  a  contract  between  rational 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS     307 

men  who  should  accordingly  live  true  to  that  contract  and 
secure  to  each  his  fundamental  rights.  In  short,  the 
great  enterprise  of  man  morally,  socially  and  politically 
is  the  happiness  and  well-being  of  each  member  of  so- 
ciety, 

Intejlectualism  has  been  essentially  optimistic.  Its 
note  was  sounded  by  Francis  Bacon  "  He  was  not  himself 
scientifically  trained,  and  in  many  respects,  especially 
owing  to  his  ignorance  of  mathematics,  he  radically  mis- 
interpreted the  methods  and  ideals  of  the  new  science. 
But  he  prophetically  expounded,  in  speech  of  magnificent 
power,  a  new  vision  of  human  possibilities  upon  the  earth. 
He  taught  that  knowledge,  scientific  knowledge,  is  power. 
In  virtue  of  man's  intelligence'manTias  a  creative  capacity^ 
to  which  no  limits  can  be  prescribed,  a  power  of  sub- 
ordinating nature,  and  of  taking  the  destiny  which  hitherto 
nature  has  controlled  into  his  own  hands.  If,  as  it  seemed 
to  the  archaeologists  of  that  time,  the  Greeks  may  be  said 
to  have  created  the  arts,  the  moderns,  according  to  Bacon, 
were  destined  for  the  still  greater  task  of  recasting  the 
entire  economy  of  human  life. 

"The  beginnings  of  the  next  step  appear  in  John  Locke. 
Bacon's  vision  had  been  limited  to  the  material  conditions 
of  human  existence.  Locke  applied  the  same  free  and 
forward-looking  analysis  to  its  political  and  educational 
aspects.  And  the  seed  which  he  sowed,  slowly  maturing, 
came  to  sudden  flower  in  what  have  very  fittingly  been 
named  the  Enlightenment  philosophies,  the  philosophies 
of  the  Encyclopedists  and  Rousseau.  They  taught  that 
by  the  radical  recasting  of  social  institutions  and  by  the 
development  of  new  and  better  educational  methods, 
human  life  may  be  transformed  into  something  very  differ- 
ent from,  and  immeasurably  superior  to,  all  that  it  has 
hitherto  been.  The  future  will  be  related  only  through 
contrast  to  the  past.     As  Godwin,  an  enthusiastic  sup- 


308      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

porter  of  this  teaching,  declared  in  his  Political  Justice: 
'Nothing  can  be  more  unreasonable  than  to  argue  from 
men  as  we  find  them,  to  men  as  they  may  hereafter  be 
made.'"i 

The  seventeenth  and  the  eighteenth  centuries  con- 
stituted the  era  during  which  intellectuahsm  was  most 
prominent  and  these  centuries  witnessed  as  the  greatest 
achievements  of  intellectuahsm,  on  the  theoretical  side, 
the  rise  and  development  of  mathematics  and  mechanics, 
the  nebular  hypothesis,  the  associationist  psychology  and 
the  contract  theory  of  society,  and,  on  the  practical 
side,  the  French  Revolution  and  the  vast  moral,  social  and 
political  influences  throughout  Europe  and  America  which 
sprang  from  that  tremendous  event.  The  main  stages  of 
the  development  of  intellectuahsm  appear  in  Francis 
Bacon,  John  Locke,  the  Enp;lish  Deists.  Voltaire,  the 
FrenchEncyclopedists  and  Rousseau.  It  culminated  in 
the  Enlightenment,  in  the  "Age  of  Reason." 

"The  Enhghtenment  is  well  named,  and  deserves  more 
credit  than  we,  who  have  profited  by  its  labors,  and  can 
criticise  its  earlier  manifestations,  are  usually  prepared  to 
admit.  Its  influence  seems  even  more  fundamental  and 
far-reaching  than  that  which  has  been  exercised  by  the 
evolution  theories  propounded  by  Darwin.  It  is  the 
specifically  modern  standpoint.  It  is  the  type  and  norm 
of  every  philosophy  which  seeks  to  justify  the  methods  and 
doctrines  by  the  future  rather  than  by  the  past.  It  is  also 
the  legitimate  offspring  of  the  classical  tradition.  For  it 
expresses,  under  the  altered  conditions  of  modern  life,  and 
in  view  of  the  powerful  weapon  which  modern  science  has 
placed  in  men's  hands,  the  same  free  self-assurance  that 
inspired  the  Greeks  in  the  upbuilding  of  their  civilization. 
It  expresses  the  same  conviction  of  the  supreme  value  of 

^  Norman  Kemp  Smith,  The  Middle  Ages,  the  Renaissance,  and 
the  Modem  Mind,  Hibbert  Journal,  1914,  12,  545  f. 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS    309 

intellectual  enlightenment  as  the  chief  agency  of  human 
progress."  ^ 

Romanticism,  in  contrast,  has  given  the  modern  world  a 
markedly  different  philosophy.  Romanticism  has  sought 
chiefly  to  accomplish  two  things,  to  save  the  uiiristian 
rehgion  from  atheistic  naturalism  and  to  revive  the  emo- 
tional and  spiritual  life  dominant  in  the  middle  ages.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  has  endeavored  to  outflank  naturalism  by 
ideahsm.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  attacked  naturalism 
in  front  b}''  endeavoring  to  show  that  the  world  of  expe- 
rience is  not  the  world  of  science. 

In  idealism,  romanticism  has  exalted  the  part  played  by 
the  mind  in  experiencing  the  world.  Taking  its  premises 
from  Descartes  and  ultimately  from  St.  Augustine  it 
showed  the  central  position  occupied  by  the  mind  and 
personality  of  the  thinker  and  argued  that  the  world  is 
mind-made  and  mind-constituted.  That  romanticism 
could  thus  outflank  mtellectualism  was  due  to  an  ex- 
tremely weak  point  in  the  breastwork  of  naturalism,  its 
dualism  of  matter  and  mind,  its  resulting  inability  to  ex- 
plain the  mind  natural istically,  and  its  own  tendency  to 
adopt  the  phenomenalism  of  Democritus.  Idealism  first 
appeared  in  the  early  eighteenth  century  in  the  writings  of 
■Berke]ey_and  received  its  most  famous  expression  in  those 
ol  KantTFichte,  Hegel  and  iSchopenhaur.  ~ 

But  romanticism  has  made  a  direct  attack  upon  natural- 
ism. This  attack  has  taken  the  form  of  extreme  empiricism 
and  emotionalism.  Science  is  abstract  andgeneral,  reality 
is^oncrete  and  unique^  The  entire  scheme  of  science  is  an 
"extreme  over-simplification  of  the  wealth,  variety,  com- 
plexity and  essential  dynamism  of  the  world.  Reality  has 
to  be  experienced,  intuited  and  felt.  It  cannot  be  und'er- 
stood.    It  can  at  most  be  described.    The  world  is  neither 

^  Norman  Kemp  Smith,  The  Middle  Ages,  the  Renaissance,  and 
the  Modem  Mind,  Hibbert  Journal,  1914,  12,  p.  546. 


310      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

logical  nor  mechanical,  but  is  a  world  of  quality,  intensity, 
spontaneity  and  life.  Reality  defies  the  rigor  and  the 
fixity  of  scientific  concepts  and  its  manifold  contents  can- 
not be  reduced  to  mathematical  entities.  And  the  proof 
of  all  this  is  man's  direct  experience  of  nature  and  of  life. 
It  is  empirical  proof  and  it  rejects  altogether  the  principles 
and  the  conclusions  of  rationalism.  This  empiricism  was 
already  evident  in  the  writings  of  Berkeley  but  it  came  to 
fuller  expression  in  the  romanticists  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

But  part  of  this  proof  got  from  experience  is  the  verdict 
of  the  emotions.  Man  is  not  fundamentally  rational. 
Rather  he  is  fundamentally  will,  feeling  and  instinct.  His 
true  interest  in  the  world  is  not  science  but  the  moral  and 
the  spiritual  life.  The  world  is  not  a  puzzle  to  be  solved 
but  a  cause  to  be  won  or  a  life  to  be  led,  'i'his  appeal  to  the 
feelings  and  sentiments  was  made  first  in  such  religious 
revivals  as  methodism  in  England  and  pietism  in  Germany. 
Its  most  famous  expression  is  to  be  found  in  Rousseau  and 
in  the  great  German  thinkers  whom  he  influenced,  Kant 
and  Fichte  and  again  in  the  romantic  poets  and  literary 
writers  of  England,  France  and  Germany  in  the  late 
eighteenth   century  and  the  early  nineteenth   century. 

For  further  study  read: 

Kemp  Smith,  N.,  The  Middle  Ages,  the  Renaissance  and  the 

Modem  Mind,  Hibbert  Journal,  1914,  12; 
Paulsen,  F.,  System  of  Ethics,  126-168,  169-215. 

4.  The  course  of  modern  philosophical  movements  and 
the  philosophical  tendencies  of  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  centuries. — We  are  now  prepared  to  correlate 
two  matters,  which  correlated  are  immensely  significant 
to  the  student  of  modern  philosophy.  On  the  one  hand, 
intellectualism  was  reaching  its  full  power  already  in  the 
days  of  Galilei,  Bacon  and  Descartes  and  retained  this 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS    311 

power  until  the  passing  of  the  French  Revohition  and 
"the  Age  of  Reason,"  that  is,  until  the  fall  of  the  Na- 
poleonic Empire  in  the  early  nineteenth  century.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  has  been  shown  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
modern  science  began  in  the  days  of  Galilei  but,  with  the 
exception  of  mathematics,  mechanics  and  the  gravitational 
astronomy,  did  not  really  pass  beyond  its  embryonic  stages 
until  the  nineteenth  century.  Hence  the  intellectualism  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  was  modern  in  so  far 
gsJUmshased  uponthe  new  astronomy  and  mechanics  but  for 
the  rest  it  was  not  modern  atall,  rather  it  was  Greek.  Put  more 
precisely,  the  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  was  that  of  Democritus  revised  in  the  light  of 
the  new  astronomy  and  mechanics  with  much  of  the" 
StoTc  inoral,  social  and  political  philosophy  added.  In" 
short,  the  Copermcan  universe,  the  Newtonian  mechanics 
and  the  resulting  philosophy  are  modern;  but  with  this 
exception  the  modern  world  has  lacked  a  philosophy  based 
on  its  own  discoveries  and  its  own  experience,  or  at  least 
has  lacked  such  a  philosophy  until  the  nineteenth  century. 
Whether  or  not  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  witnessing 
the  rise  of  a  truly  modern  philosophy,  is  a  difficult  question 
for  the  historian  to  answer,  not  only  because  he  is  still  too 
near  the  thought  of  the  past  one  hundred  years  but  also 
because  these  hundred  years  of  rapid  scientific  growth 
seem  to  be  only  the  beginning  of  a  still  vaster  growth  to 
come.  However,  if  a  truly  modern  philosophy  is  there  to 
be  found,  it  must  be  sought  in  the  philosophical  move- 
ments since  the  time  of  Darwin,  that  is,  in  the  past  fiftj' 
years.  I  beheve  that  such  a  modern  philosophy  is  to  be 
found  in  romanticism,  in  the  evolutionistic  philosophy,  in 
pragmatism  and  in  the  new  realism. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  time  of  Galilei  and  trace  briefly 
the  course  of  modern  philosophical  development:  The 
intellectualistic  movement  of  the  seventeenth  and  eight- 


312      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

eenth  centuries  gave  rise  first  to  a  naturalistic  mechanical 
world-hypothesis  and  to  a  distinctly  rationahstic  method  of 
solving  the  problems  of  nature,  life,  mind  and  society.^ 
Moveover,  this  older  intellectualism  contained  within  it  a 
fundamental  and  unavoidable  difficulty  inherited  from 
the  ancient  world,  its  dualism  between  mind  and  matter 
and  the  resulting  phenomenahsm.  This  difficulty  com- 
menced to  make  itself  evident  already  in  the  thought  of 
Descartes  and  John  Locke,  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  some  of  the  successors  of  Locke,  it  led  directly  either  to 
extreme  subjectivism  (Berkeley)  or  to  an  agnostic  phenom- 
enalism (Kant).  The  Enghsh  followers  of  Berkeley  transr 
formed  his  doctrine  into  a  subjectivistic  positivism  and 
the  German  followers  of  Kant  transformed  his  phenorn- 
enafism  into  a  romajnticspirHu^i^i^  or  ideahsm.  Thus 
thedualism  of  Descartes  has  hadjatleast  three  offspring, 
phenomenalism7~subjectivistic  positivism  and  ideaUsm. 
The  two  former  fiave^  keptTclosef T^'Ehe~original  intellec- 
tuaUsm  from  which  they  sprang;  whereas  the  latter  has 
been  predominantly  romantic.^ 

The  next  movement,  largely  scientific  and  intellec- 
tualistic  in  origin  but  also  in  no  small  measure  romantic  in 
origin,  was  the  evolutionistic  movement.  It  belongs  pre- 
eminently to  the  nineteenth  centur3^  Its  most  important 
achievements  were  the  rise  of  historical  research  and  the 
geological  and  biological  theories  of  evolution.  Next  to 
the  earlier  intellectualism  it  has  been  one  of  the  most 
powerful  factors  in  modern  philosophic  thought.^ 

Almost  contemporary  in  origin  and  development  with 
the  evolutionistic  m6vemenT7influencingJt_an3TnHuenced 

^  These  tendencies,  especially  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  constitute  the  subject  of  chapter  XXIII. 

2  These  subjectivistic  doctrines  and  their  consequences  constitute 
the  subject  of  chapter  XXIV. 

'  The  doctrine  of  evolution  is  the  subject  of  chapter  XXV. 


THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHICAL  MOVEMENTS    313 

JjXJt,  arose  the  romantic  movement.  Romanticism  began 
to  appear  in  the  eighteenth  century  but  received  its  fullest 
expression  in  literature,  art,  reUgion,  and  thought  during 
the  nineteenth  century.^ 

Finally,  besides  the  evolutionistic  and  romantic  move- 
ments further  reactions  against  the  older  intellectuahsm 
have  arisen.  These  further  movements,  while  remaining 
themselves  intellectualistic,  have  given  expression  to  a 
deeper  insight  into  the  nature  and  results  of  modern  science 
and  have  led  some  thinkers  to  re-examine  and  reject  the 
very  basis  of  the  Greek  philosophy  and  so  the  basis  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  intellectuahsm  and  its 
subjectivistic  consequences.  Whether  or  not  these  new- 
movements  will  unite  with  the  romantic  movement  and 
so  form  a  thoroughly  modern  philosophy  remains  a  ques- 
tion for  the  future  to  answer.^ 

Thus  the  philosophic  thought  of  the  present  time  is 
extremely  complex.  In  it  are  to  be  found  all  the  modern 
movements  from  those  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  move- 
ments that  are  now  in  their  infancy.  However,  complex 
as  it  may  be,  let  us  remember  that  it  contains  fundamen- 
tally but  the  two  movements,  intellectuahsm  and  roman- 
ticism. 

^  The  romantic  movement  is  the  subject  of  chapter  XXVI. 
2  Recent  and  present  philosophical  tendencies  are  the  subject  of 
chapter  XXVII. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

RATIONALISM   AND   NATURALISM 

1.  The  problem  of  method. — At  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century  and  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  great 
interest  arose  in  the  method  of  winning  the  new  and  vast 
information  which  all  intellectual  men  seemed  convinced 
was  on  the  verge  of  being  discovered.  As  we  look  back 
upon  those  days  we  see  that  Galilei  ^  was  already  master 
of  the  method  of  research  which  has  proved  so  fruitful 
in  the  succeeding  centuries,  the  experimental  method. 
This  method  distrusts  traditional  belief,  mere  argument 
and  appeal  to  authority  and  bids  us  go  to  the  facts,  study 
them  and  through  them  verify  our  hypotheses.^  But  the 
method  is  far  more  than  an  appeal  to  fact,  for  it  is  also 
experimental.  It  bids  us  invent  or  discover  an  hypothesis 
that  will  account  for  the  known  facts  and  then  deduce  from 
our  hypothesis  further  as  yet  unobserved  facts  and  finally 
verify  our  hypothesis  by  ascertaining  either  through  fur- 
ther observation  or  through  experimental  enquiry  whether 
or   not   these   deduced   facts  are  indeed  facts.     More- 

^  The  same  may  be  said  of  William  Gilbert,  the  father  of  the  science 
of  magnetism. 

^  The  same  necessity  that  the  searchers  after  truth  observe  facts 
and  employ  experiments  was  voiced  also  by  the  great  English  thinker, 
Francis  Bacon;  but  Bacon  was  far  less  aware  of  all  that  is  required 
by  the  experimental  method  than  were  GaUlei  and  Gilbert  and  be- 
sides was  not  able,  as  were  they,  to  put  the  method  to  use  and  to 
demonstrate  by  wonderful  success  the  worth  of  the  method.  More- 
over, Bacon  quite  undervalued  the  experimental  work  of  these  two 
masters  of  experimental  research. 

314 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  315 

over,  the  method  is  experimental  by  being  analytical. 
It  bids  us  endeavor  to  isolate  artificially  both  facts  and 
problems  or  to  seek  out  facts  isolated  in  the  world  about 
us.  By  so  doing  we  may  greatly  simplify  the  exceeding 
complex  intermixture  of  causes  and  effects  present  in  the 
ordinary  happenings  and  objects  of  nature  and  may  be 
enabled  to  study  the  individual  cause  and  its  specific  effect 
or  to  study  the  individual  effect  and  its  specific  cause. ^ 

Though  experimental  enquiry  became  rapidly  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  tradition  of 
European  physical  science  and  spread  gradually  from  one 
field  of  study  to  another;  ^  we  must  hasten  to  add  that 
this  was  but  the  beginning  and  not  the  end  of  a  mighty 
movement  in  science  and  that  most  European  thinkers 
still  held  to  a  radically  different  philosophy  and  method. 
Moreover,  in  those  days  most  thoughtful  men  beheved 
the  goal  of  universal  and  infallible  knowledge  to  be  not 
far  distant;  and  though  they  fought  AristoteHanism  they 
were  themselves  still  Aristotelian.  Hence  under  the  spell 
of  a  growing  and  triumphant  mathematics  and  mathemat- 
ical dynamics  they  hoped  soon  to  give  the  world  a  dedu^- 
tive,  universal  and  infallible  science.  In  short,  they  were 
extreme  mtellectual  optimists. 

Let  us  consider  briefly  the  essential  character  of  a  de- 
ductive, universal  and  infallible  science.  If  we  are  to  have 
a  science  that  is  fin^j.  universal  and  deductive:  we  must 
^first  discover  all^he  premises  needed;  and  if  we  are  to 
discover  these  premises  quickly,  they  must  not  only  be 

1  Of  course  the  experimental  method  requires  also  the  invention  of 
more  and  more  delicate  and  accurate  instruments  of  research  and 
more  and  more  precise  and  elaborate  technique  in  observing  and 
experimenting. 

^  Of  course  this  method  is  in  principle  as  old  as  civilization  itself 
and  especially  as  old  as  science;  but  never  before  in  the  history  of 
man  was  it  elaborated  and  deliberately  practiced  as  it  has  been  since 
the  days  of  Galilei. 


316      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

easy  to  discover  but  be  few  in  number.  Again,  if  we  are 
to  have  a  final,  or  infallible  science,  our  premises  must  be 
true;  and  we  must  be  able  to  know  that  they  are  true. 
Now  it  was  characteristic  of  even  the  radical  thinkers  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  to  believe  that 
these  requirements  could  be  easily  met  and  were  actually 
being  met  by  them,  and  therefore  to  believe  that  science 
would  soon  become  a  distinctly  non-experimental  pro- 
cedure. The  chief  reasons  for  their  so  believing  are  easy 
to  discover.  (1)  As  compared  with  the  vast  amount  of 
information  possessed  by  man  to-day  they  were  relatively 
speaking  extremely  ignorant;  and  the  more  ignorant 
man  is,  the  simpler  is  the  world  to  which  he  responds, 
that  is,  the  simpler  the  world  seems.  In  short,  to  them 
the  world  seemed  far  simpler  than  it  does  to  us.  (2)  They 
were  new  at  experimental  research  and  h"ad  not  yet  had 
time  to  learn  that  experimental  research  usually  discovers 
problems  faster  than  it  solves  problems;  in  other  words, 
that  the  more  we  learn  the  niore_we  dis£QYer_th£r£_is  t^ 
learn.  (3)  They  were  makingBrilliant  discoveries  in  the 
fields  of  mathematics,  celestial  mechanics,  dynamics,  and 
the  dynamical  aspects  of  human  physiology,  or  briefly, 
in  pure  and  applied  mathematics;  and  so  it  was  natural 
for  them  to  identify  mathematical  science  with  science 
as  such.  Hence  they  ascribed  to  science  as  such  the 
marked  characteristics  of  pure  mathematics  and  mechan- 
ics. Now,  at  least  as  they  conceived  mathematics,  these 
marked  characteristics  were,  a  few  infalHble  axioms,  a  few 
postulates,  a  few  definitions  and  then  a  rapid  and  elab- 
orate deduction  of  the  remainder  of  the  science.  There- 
fore it  is  not  astonishing  that  the  universe  conceived  by 
them  to  be  a  mathematical  machine,  completely  explicable 
in  terms  of  a  relatively  few  mathematical  presuppositions, 
should  seem  an  object  which  the  man  of  research  might 
quickly  exhaust  experimentally  and  for  which  he  might 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  317 

quickly   discover   a   universal,    infallible   and   deductive 
science. 

Thus  the  problem  of  method  became  a  matter  of 
great  interest  in  these  centuries  and  received  two  conflicting 
solutions.  On  the  one  hand,  Galilei  and,  inajesser  degree. 
Bacon  were  teaching  Europe  the  metho3~orexperimental 
enquiry  and  its  marvellous  possible  achievernents.  On_ 
the  other  hand,  tlie_Frenchjhilosopher  and  matheinatician_ 
Descartes  was  telling  Europe  aSout  a  method^  that  is 
mathematical  and  deductive^  And,  both  parties  were 
genuine  spokesmen  of  the  progressive  scientific  spirit 
of  their  age. 

We  have  now  formulated  the  most  prominent  charac- 
teristics of  the  two  methods.  Let  us  next  briefly  describe 
some  important  details  of  the  method  of  Descartes  as  a 
remarkable  example  of  the  deductive  method  and  in 
general  of  the  rationalistic  movement.  (1)  Descartes 
indicates  his  desire  not  merely  for  universal  information 
but  also  for  its  rapid  attainment.  Moreover,  he  expresses 
the  hope  of  attaining  it  with  certainty,  or  infallibility; 
and  he  reveals  the  basis  of  this  hope  by  telKng  us  that 
he  has  been  deeply  impressed  with  the  certainty  and  final- 
ity of  geometry.  This  certainty  of  mathematics  he  easily 
reduces  to  two  facts,  the  certainty  of  the  premises,  or 
axioms  and  the  certainty  of  deductive  inference.  But 
whence  comes  the  certainty  of  the  geometrical  axiom? 
Descartes  answers:  Whatever  the  mind  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly perceives  to  be  true  is  certain;  or  translated  into 
the  language  of  mathematics,  we  get  all  our  axioms  by 
intuition  of  which  mathematical  intuition  is  the  pest 
known  instance.^    As  we  ordinarily  believe,  we  can  see 

*  Of  course  at  the  present  day  we  know  more  regarding  mathe- 
matical intuition  than  did  Descartes.  We  know  that  it  is  built  up 
by  training  as  is  any  other  intellectual  habit  and  can  be  extremely 
misleading  and  erroneous.    Moreover,  pure  mathematics  to-day  does 


318      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

intuitively  that  a  straight  Hne  is  the  shortest  distance 
between  two  points,  or  that  the  whole  is  equal  to  the  sum 
of  its  parts.  (2)  Thus  precisely  as  intuition  seemed  to  Des- 
cartes to  furnish  the  sufficient  and  necessary  conditions 
for  geometry,  so  intuition,  he  believed,  can  furnish  science 
the  requisite  premises  for  deducing  the  entire  nature  of 
the  universe,  or  for  explaining  everything.  That  is  to  say, 
man's  intuition,  or  his  abiUty  to  perceive  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly, enables  him  to  discover  the  infalhble  truths  which 
are  requisite  not  only  for  physical  science  and  mathemat- 
ics but  also  for  morals,  politics  and  rehgion.  (3)  These 
intuitions,  or  at  least  the  capacities  upon  which  they  de- 
pend, are  inborn  and  universal  among  men.  They  are 
"innate  ideas,"  and  so  we  have  innate  ideas  which  enable 
us  to  deduce  mathematics,  physics,  morahty  and  religion. 
(4)  But  in  the  interest  of  orthodox  religion  which  claims 
to  be  a  revelation  from  God  and  therefore  to  be  a  doctrine 
that  man  cannot  get  through  his  own  intellectual  search, 
morahty^  and  rehgion  are  divided  into  two  departments, 
natulir  and^xevealetL.  Natural  morality  and^natural 
religion  can  be  deduced  from  man's  innate  ideas;  but  of 
course  revealed  religion  and  revealed  moraUty  come  to 
man  only  through  the  Church.^ 

This  rationalism  was  no  doubt  a  lineal  descendant  from 
the  scholastic  philosophy  of  the  medieval  thinkers;  and  it 
indicated,  as  I  have  mentioned,  that  though  experimental 
research  had  begun  in  certain  limited  fields  of  science  it 
had  not  commenced  universally.  Further,  it  indicated 
that  the  extension  of  experimentahsm  as  a  method  was  to 
be  a  gradual  and  slow  process  requiring  centuries  to  make 

not  assume  the  certainty  of  its  postulates.  In  Descartes'  time  and 
until  recent  decades,  however,  the  mathematician  did  so. 

1  The  most  famous  rationahstic  philosophers  of  the  seventeenth 
century  were:  Hobbes  (fl.  c.  1630);  Descartes  (fl.  c.  1635);  Spinoza 
(fi.  c.  1670);  and  Leibniz  (fl.  c.  1685). 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  319 

its  way  into  all  fields  of  thoughtful  study.  That  is  to  say, 
rationalism  is  science  based  largely  on  socially  inherited, 
or  acquired  prejudices  which  we  euphemisticalTy  call 
axioms  and  is  thereforejiecessarily  present  in  the  early 
stages  of  any  science  when^the  known  fa^  belonging  to_ 
the  field'of  this  science  are  quite  inadequate  to  test  thor- 
oughly our  ^heories.  It  may  be  called  the  groping  stage 
of  a  science.  Hence  until  man  learned,  what  has  proved 
to  be  an  extremely  difficult  lesson,  that  what  is  possible 
in  mathematics  may  for  decades  and  centuries  to  come  be 
impossible  in  the  complex  existential  sciences,  such  as 
physics,  chemistry,  biology,  psychology,  and  sociology; 
he  was  disposed  to  believe  optimistically  that  a  little 
thought  could  make  these  sciences  thoroughly  deductive. 
Such  being  the  case,  one  of  the  most  important  matters 
in  the  history  of  modern  philosophy  is  the  order  in  which 
the  various  sciences  have  become  experimental.  In_^en- 
^al,  the  physical  and  chemical  sciences  and  astronomy 
becameYa^idly  experimental,  or  inductive.  JMext  m  order 
have  comethe  sciences,  boEany,  zoology  and  physiology, 
and  geology  and  mineralogy.  Whereas  the  last  sciences 
to  reach  a  genuinely  inductive,  or  experimental  stage  have 
been  the  sciences  of  mind  and  society.  In  this  transforma- 
tion, the  sciences  of  life,  mmd,  and  society  have  been 
markedly  slower  than  the  physical  sciences,  and  the 
sciences  of  mind  and  society  markedly  slower  than  the 
sciences  of  life,  and  finally  the  sciences  of  society  than  the 
science  of  mind.  The  physical  sciences  and  the  biological 
and  geological  sciences  had  clearly  reached  an  experimental 
and  inductive  stage  by  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries  respectively;  whereas  the  remaining  sciences 
have  been  slowly  approaching  this  stage  during  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Evidently  this  difference  in  the  speed  of 
transforming  from  rationaUstic  into  inductive  sciences 
has  been  due  to  the  difference  in  complexity  of  the  subject- 


320       THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

matter  and  to  the  difficulty  of  isolating  the  facts  under 
study  and  of  verifying  the  hypotheses  entertained.  Thus 
for  centuries  the  following  sciences  or  departments  within 
science  remained  rationahstic :— the  explanation  of  known 
geological  facts;  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  species  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  and  of  the  causes  of  their  adaptation  to 
environment;  for  the  most  part,  the  science  of  medicine; 
the  theory  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  human  mind 
and  of  its  growth;  theology  and  the  science  of  the  origin 
and  nature  of  religious  belief  and  custom;  the  theories 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  society  and  of  political  insti- 
tutions; the  study  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  economic 
customs  and  institutions;  the  science  of  the  origin  and 
nature  of  morals;  the  science  of  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  language;  and  in  general  the  science  of  the  origin 
and  development  of  civilization. 

The  rationalistic  theories  entertained  by  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  century  thinkers  in  several  of  these  fields 
are  interesting  and  especially  important  to  the  student 
of  the  history  of  philosophy.  But  before  considering  them 
we  shall  do  well  to  study  briefly  another  aspect  of  this  first 
modem  philosophical  movement,  namely,  its  naturalism. 

For  further  study  read: 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  I,  176-178,  193- 
203,  218-222,  301-307,  356-362; 

Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  383-399; 

Smith,  N.,  Studies  in  the  Cartesian  Philosophy,  1902,  1-47, 
137-146,  160-169; 

Russell,  B.,  A  Critical  Exposition  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Leibniz,  1900,  1-69; 

Galileo  (transl.  Crew  and  Salvio),  Dialogues  Concerning 
Two  New  Sciences; 

Descartes  (transl.  Haldane  and  Ross),  Discourse  on  Method; 
Rules  for  the  Direction  of  the  Mind;  Principles  of  Phi- 
losophy, Part  I; 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  321 

Bacon,  Advancement  of  Learning;  and  Novum  Organ um, 
Book  I. 

2.  Naturalism :  The  universe  conceived  as  a  perpetual 
motion  machine. — The  greatest  philosophical  revolution 
the  intellectual  world  has  ever  witnessed  resulted  from  the 
astronomical,  dynamical,  and  physiological  discoveries  of 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  The  ancient 
Greek  thinkers  inherited  from  prehistory  a  conception  of 
the  world  as  a  system  contained  within  the  sky.  Figura- 
tively speaking  the  Greek  thinker  was  a  chick  within  the 
egg-shell  and  he  never  really  succeeded  in  pecking  his 
way  out.  The  modern  thinker  has  done  so.  Now  this 
egg  was  the  geocentric  system ;  that  is  to  say,  a  world  with 
the  earth  at  its  center  surrounded  by  the  heavenly  spheres, 
a  world,  as  conceived  by  the  Aristotehan,  finite  in  diameter 
with  God  immediately  beyond,  a  world  in  which  we 
ascend  from  earth  to  the  higher  and  supernatural  realms 
of  the  stars,  and  a  world  in  which  change  and  decay  and 
all  that  we  call  natural  ends  this  side  of  the  moon.  Though 
some  Ionian  philosophers  and  a  few  Pythagorean  as- 
tronomers may  have  thought  ot  the  world  Jn^  ways  tEat 
"contfadleted  all  of  lIIIs,  they  lacked  thefacts  that  could 
wm  the  mtellectual  classes  from  the  theories  which  agreed 
so  well  with  prenistdric  myths ^lid  with  ,ordinary  sense 
perception.  In  short,  Greek  thought  failed  to  brea£ 
t!irougTr*the  egg-shell;  and  the  shell  remained  unbroken 
until  Copernicus  and  his  successors  made  their  way  out 
and  discovered  a  universe  infinite  in  extent,  a  universe  in 
which  the  earth  occupies  a  position  but  infinitesimally 
important,  and  a  universe  in  which  matter  and  its  me- 
chanical changes  of  configuration  are  present  everywhere. 
What  had  been  before  a  world  in  which  demons  and  the 
supernatural  play  an  important  part,  now  was  seen  to  be  a 
world  dynamical  throughout,  to  be  one  vast  machine. 


322      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

In  less  than  two  hundred  years,  from  Galilei  to  Laplace, 
this  revolution  in  thought  was  an  accomplished  fact. 

With  Laplace  we  get  a  complete  naturalistic  mechanical 
world  conception.  It  was  complete  because  by  his  time 
mathematics,  mechanics  and  gravitational  astronomy  were 
sufficiently  advanced  to  enable  the  thinker  to  give  in  their 
terms  a  rational  account  of  the  origin  of  solar  systems  and 
of  the  behavior  of  such  systems  when  once  in  existence. 
Again,  it  was  complete  for  by  his  time  sufficient  informa- 
tion was  at  hand  to  conceive  and  to  justify  the  hypothesis 
that  nature  is  a  perpetual  motion  machine  persisting  in 
its  world  building  and  world  destruction  throughout 
infinite  time.  Finally,  it  was  complete  for  all  nature's 
processes  could  then  be  thought  of  as  following  by  mathe- 
matical necessity  out  of  preceding  stages  and  in  turn 
giving  rise  by  the  same  necessity  to  succeeding  stages. 

But  the  name  of  Laplace  marks  only  the  end  of  two 
centuries  of  naturalistic  development  from  Galilei.  Al- 
ready in  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  specula- 
tive thinkers  foresaw  in  principle  what  Laplace  and  the 
intellectual  men  of  his  day  had  far  more  evidence  for  be- 
lieving, that  the  world  is  one  vast  machine  ruled  by 
mathematical  law.  Such  earlier  thinkers  before  Laplace 
and  before  Newton,  were  Hobbes,  Descartes,  Spinoza  and 
many  of  their  contemporaries.  From  them  and  their 
successors  the  intellectual  world  had  rapidly  learned  to 
adopt  a  naturalistic  philosophy,  so  that  by  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  and  the  early  eighteenth  century 
naturalism  had  become  as  a  matter  of  course  the  concep- 
tion of  the  world  entertained  by  the  educated  and  thought- 
ful.i 

1  Some  sixteenth  century  thinkers  also,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out  in  the  preceding  chapter,  were  naturalists.  The  word  naturalism 
is  somewhat  ambiguous,  having  both  a  generic  and  a  specific  mean- 
ing.    Generically,  it  is  the  opposite  of  supernaturalism  and  is  the 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  323 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  study  of  the  influence  of  both 
rationahsm  and  naturalism  in  certain  fields  of  thought  that 
are  especially  interesting  as  typical  of  the  philosophy  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  such  fields  as 
rehgion,  physiology,  psychology,  and  social  and  pohtical 
theory. 

For  further  study  read: 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  212-235; 

Paulsen,  F.   (transl.  Thilly),  Introduction  to  Philosophy, 
1907,  53-74; 

Ward,  J.,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  Vol.  I; 

Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  399^25. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Lange,  F.  A.  (transl.  Thomas),  History  of  Materialism,  Vol. 
I,  215-330  and  Vol.  II,  1-123; 

Smith,  Studies  in  the  Cartesian  Philosophy. 

3.  Rationalism  and  naturalism  in  religion. — The  in- 
fluence of  the  rationalistic  and  mechanical  conception  of 
the  world  was  quickly  manifest  in  religious  thought,  and 
naturalism  soon  gave  rise  to  new  religious  philosophies. 
In  the  first  place,  a  machine-world  cannot^  include  the 
working  of  non-mechanical  and  supernatural  agents,  such 
as  spirits  or  devils;  for  m  a  world  ruled  by  mechanical  law 
nothing  other  than  events  consistent  with  such  law  can 
be  assumed  to  take  place.  All  other  happenings  are  but 
myth  and  superstition.  In  the  second  place,  as  a  perpetual 
motion  machine  the  world  is  not  a  stage  on  which  divine 
plans  and  purposes  are  seen  playing  their  part  from  day  to 

name  of  the  doctrine  that  all  of  existence  lends  itself  to  scientific 
explanation.  Specifically,  it  is  the  name  of  the  doctrine  that  all  of 
existence  lends  itseK  to  mechanical  explanation.  In  otherwords, 
naturalism  in  its  specific,  or  narrow  nieaning  i3_tl;^2^1iet '  that"all^ 
science  can  be  reduced  to  me(^ahic3l  IF  is  in  this  latter  sense,  which 
of  course  includes  the  generic  sense,  that  I  have  used  the  term  in  this 
section. 


324      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

day  or  even  from  age  to  age.  What  happens,  happens  by 
inexorable  law  and  by  mathematical  necessity.  As  it  was 
absurd  for  men  to  think  that  the  earth  was  the  center  of 
the  universe  with  the  entire  drama  of  creation  playing 
about  the  earth  and  directed  toward  the  earth  as  the  key 
to  the  plot,  so  it  is  absurd  for  man  to  regard  his  existence 
and  his  human  interests  as  revealing  the  ends  and  plans  of 
creation.  Rather  he  must  away  altogether  with  every 
teleological  theory  of  things  and  events  and  learn  to  see  in 
every  object  the  mere  mathematical  result  of  nature's 
mechanical  processes.  Ends  or  plans  are  not  causes,  for 
the  only  causes  nature  exhibits  are  the  motions  and  con- 
figurations of  material  particles.  Jf  then  the  wonderful 
structure  of  animals  and  plants  and  the  marvellous  adapta- 
tion  between  them  and  their  habitats  seem  the  result  of 
mteliigent  piannmg,  hej^t  rid  himself  of  thia_  illusion 
and  gain  a  new  wayof  viewing  these  things.  Nature  has 
produced  tnese  precisely  by  the  same  fundamental  means 
by  which  she  has  produced  all  other  things.  They  have 
come  into  being  because  material  particles  happened  to 
have  taken  some  extremely  complex  and  unusual  con- 
figuration. If  you  enquire  why  these  particles  happened  to 
be  in  this  configuration  instead  of  in  some  other  you  merely 
force  the  naturahst  to  appeal  to  preceding  stages  in  the 
configuration  of  the  system  under  study.  You  raise  the 
same  sort  of  problem  as  though  you  asked  why  does  the 
wind  blow,  and  why  north  instead  of  south  and  why  at 
forty  miles  an  hour  instead  of  at  ten?  The  most  science  can 
do  is  to  search  for  the  preceding  conditions  of  the  atmos- 
phere and  of  the  factors  varying  the  pressure  of  the  air  and 
thus  arrive  at  the  physical  causes  from  which  the  fact  to  be 
explained  follows  by  mathematical  necessity.  Thus  if  we 
knew  enough,  we  could  show  that  man  and  his  history  are 
but  the  mathematically  necessary  later  configurations  of 
part  of  the  matter  that  once  formed  the  solar  nebula. 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  325 

Besides  leading  to  this  antiteleological  conception  of  na- 
ture, seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  rationahsm  and, 
naturahsm  led  directly  to  three  heretical  hypotheses ;  _and 
rationalism  atlfeasFHetermined  the  typical  forms  taken  by 
"orihodoxjiheology.  Let  us  consider  immediately  the  three 
heretical  hypotheses.  Firstj_was  pantheism.  God  is  but 
another  name  for  nature  or  the  substance  of  nature. 
Second,  was  deism  with  its  natural  religion.  The  universe 
IS  a  macKine  that  like  a  clock  the  great  clock-maker,  God 
has  constructed,  wound  up  and  set  going;  and  of  course  it 
now  appears  merely  as  a  clock  performing  its  mechanical 
motions  quite  in  accord  with  the  laws  of  dynamics.  Third, 
was  of  _course  an_qut  and  out  atheism.  God  is  a  super- 
fluous hypothesis. 

Naturahstic  pantheism  had  already  made  its  appearance 
in  the  sixteenth  century  and  most  notably  in  the  writings 
of  Giordano  Bruno ;  but  its  most  famous  teacher  was  the 
seventeenth  century  philosopher  Benedict  S^inoaa.  He 
defines  God  as  the  infinite  and  eternal  substance  from 
which  the  world  follows  as  conclusions  follow  from  their 
premises  by  logical  necessity.  Otherwise  expressed,  the 
substance  of  all  things  is  God  of  whom  they  are  but  finite 
modes,  and  these  modes  are  related  to  the  substance  by 
the  same  inexorable  logical  relation  as  are  the  many  prop- 
erties of  a  triangle  to  the  triangle  as  defined  by  the  geo- 
metrician. 

Deism  taught  as  its  chief  tenet  the  distinctly  rationalis- 
tic doctrine  that  reason  is  the  ultimate  test  of  revelation. 
Christianity  is  essentially  reasonable,  therefore  thoughtful 
men  should  subject  it  to  rational  standards  of  criticism, 
and  should  search  both  nature  and  the  human  mind  for 
evidence  of  God's  existence  and  of  his  ways  and  laws. 
Again  Christianity  is  reasonable  in  that  it  is  not  mysterious 
and  in  that  it  is  and  has  always  been  a  universal  religion, 
the  religion  of  all  men,  everywhere  and  at  all  times.    Evi- 


326      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

dently  then  Christianity  is  merely,  what  man  in  those  days 
called,  a  natural  religion.  So  conceived  it  excludes  much 
that  the  church  has  put  into  the  confessions  of  faith  and 
includes  Httle  besides  the  belief  in  God,  immortality,  and 
the  future  reward  and  punishment  of  man's  deeds,  which 
beliefs  deists  argued  are  innate  and  therefore  universal  and 
valid. 

The  deistic  movement  began  in  England  late  in  the 
seventeenth  rnntury  n.nd  early  in_tKe"  following  century. 
From  England  it  spread  to  France  and  to  Germany,  and 
remained^  prominent  on  the  continent  to  the  days  following 
the  fall  of  Napoleon's  empire.^ 

Atheism,  and  especially  an  atheistic  materialism,  was  a 
natural  and  logical  conclusion  for  the  follower  of  Descartes 
to  Hrawl  If  nature  about  us,  the  body,  and  the  nervous 
system  within  us  are  but  machines  and  if  the  world  mech- 
anism can  be  thought  of  as  eternal,  God  is  a  superfluous 
scientific  hypothesis.  Moreover,  since  these  were  the  days 
when  religion  itself  seemed  but  a  matter  of  reason,  a  purely 
intellectual  matter;  it  was  logical  to  add  that  what  is 
superfluous  for  science  is  superfluous  also  for  the  conduct 
of  human  life.^ 

These  unorthodox  theological  doctrines  were  prominent 
in  the  late  eighteenth  century;  and  though  they  became 
decidedly  less  prominent  in  the  nineteenth  century,  none- 
theless they  have  persisted  as  a  noticeable  part  of  our 
present  complex  intellectual  life. 

Let  us  turn  to  the  influence  of  rationalism  upon  orthodox 
rehgious  thought.    I  have  already  pointed  out  that  theo- 

1  Prominent  among  these  rationalistic  theists  were  Locke  {fl.  c. 
1675);  Toland  {fl.  c.  1710);  Collins  {fl.  c.  1715);  Tindal  {fl..  c.  1695); 
Voltaire  {fl.  c.  1735);  Reimarus  {fl.  c.  1740);  and  many  other  writers 
in  England,  France  and  Germany. 

2  Among  the  prominent  thinkers  of  this  group  were  Holbach  {fl.  c. 
1765)  and  probably  most  of  his  contemporary  materialists  in  France, 
such  as  La  Mettrie,  Lamartine,  Diderot  and  Helv^tius. 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  327 

logical  thinking  in  the  days  of  the  reformation  and  the 
counter-reformation  (that  is  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries)  remained  essentially  of  the  same  type  as  medie- 
val scholasticism,  and  as  such  was  distinctly  rationalistic. 
Some  thinkers  went  back  to  St.  Augustine  as  did  Calvin 
and  the  French  Jansenists,  some  kept  to  Aristotle  and  St. 
Thomas  as  did  especially  the  Jesuits ;  but  these  theologians 
and  most  others  were  alike  at  least  in  presenting  the  doc- 
trines of  the  church  as  matters  to  be  proved  or  disproved, 
to  be  tested  and  verified,  by  the  deductive  reasonings 
of  scholars  and  pedants  in  their  libraries  isolated  from  the 
world  without  and  ignorant  of  the  actual  factors  that  con- 
trol religious  history  and  development. 

The  influence  of  the  naturalistic  movement  could  not 
change  the  essential  character  of  this  older  theology. 
It  could  however  influence  it  by  lessening  the  respect  for 
the  older  doctrines  and  for  the  religious  life.  This  it  did. 
At  no  other  time  has  Christiaiiity^en  so  impoverished, 
so  much  a  mere  formality,  as  it  was  in  the_eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  centuries!  We  may  say,  it  has  n^ver 
been  taken  less  seriously  even  by  itself.  Within  and  with- 
out the  Church  it  was  the  "age  of  reason,"  the  age  of 
"free  thinking." 

For  further  study  read: 

McGiffert,  A.  C,  Rise  of  Modern  Religious  Ideas,  1915; 

Paulsen,  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  145-192; 

Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  486-499. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

McGiffert,  A.  C,  Protestant  Thought  before  Kant,  1911; 

Stephen,  L.,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  2d  ed.,  1881,  Vol.  I; 

Locke,  Reasonableness  of  Christianity; 

Hume,  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion;  and  Natural 
History  of  Religion; 

Toland,  Christianity  not  Mysterious; 


328      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Collins,  Discourse  on  Freethinking; 
Tindal,  Christianity  as  Old  as  Creation. 

4.  Rationalism  and  naturalism  in  physiology. — Under 

the  influence  of  the  discoveries  in  anatomy  in  the  late 
sixteenth  century  and  in  anatomy  and  physiology  in  the 
early  seventeenth  century  the  bodies  of  animals  and  plants 
came  to  be  conceived  as  machines  and  to  be  explained  by 
means  of  mechanics.  From  Hobbes,  Harvey,  and  Des- 
cartes to  the  writers  in  the  time  of  the  French  revolution 
man  in  particular  was  thought  of  as  being  a  mere  machine 
though  of  course  a  more  complicated  machine  than  the 
brutes  and  plants  as  they  in  turn  are  more  compHcated 
than  inanimate  machines.  Thus,  as  animism  was  driven 
out  of  astronomy,  so  was  it  from  biology  also;  and  as  the 
principles  of  mechanics  were  thought  sufficient  to_£xplain 
"the  worlcTbf  the  stars,  so  were  thexJEought  sufficient  to 
explain  also  the  facts  of  life. ^ 

But  the  living  body  not  only  seemed  a  mere  machine,  it 
also  appeared  easily  exphcable.  Hence  a  purely  deductive 
mechanics  of  hfe  that  would  account  fully  for  its  origin, 
development  and  working  seemed  not  only  possible  but 
already  in  part  realized.  Thus  from  the  time  of  Descartes 
to  the  days  of  the  nineteenth  century  men  did  not  hesitate 
to  speculate  extensively  regarding  life  and  to  deduce  a 
priori  on  the  basis  of  what  seems  to  us  extremely  little 

^  The  fact  that  should  be  here  especially  marked  by  the  student  of 
the  history  of  philosophy  is  that  the  living  organism  seemed  to  men 
in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  vastly  simpler  than  it 
does  to  the  biologist  to-day.  These  times  preceded  microscopic 
anatomy  and  biochemistry  and  therefore  a  purely  mechanical 
biology  seemed  within  easy  reach;  whereas  to  us  such  a  biology  seems 
indefinitely  remote.  In  short,  the  facts  of  life  revealed  to  us  during 
the  past  century  by  means  of  the  microscope  and  by  means  of  bio- 
chemistry have  made  the  problems  of  life  seem  a  thousandfold  more 
complex  than  they  seemed  to  Hobbes  and  Descartes. 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  329 

information  elaborate  biological  theories.^  However,  in 
saying  this  we  must  not  forget  that  these  days  were  also 
the  ones  in  which  biology  was  rapidly  becoming  an  experi- 
mental and  inductive  science.  In  short,  it  was  a  time  of 
transition  in  biology  when  rationahst  and  experimentalist 
and  the  man  that  in  some  matters  is  an  experimentalist 
and  in  most  others  a  rationalist  lived  and  worked,  studied 
and  wrote  in  the  same  intellectual  world.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  On  the  Hypothesis  that  Animals  are  Auto- 
mata. 

6.  Rationalism    and    naturalism    in    psychology.^ — 

Philosophically  more  interesting  than  the  rationalistic 
biology  is  the  rationalistic  psychology  of  the  seventeenth 
and  succeeding  centuries.  This  psychology  can  be  best 
illustrated  and  studied  in  the  Cartesian  school  of  thinkers, 
Descartes  and  his  followers  to  the  present  day,  and  in  the 
EngHsh  school  of  associationists  and  their  followers  es- 

^  Even  the  niBeteenth  century  has  had  her  "deductive"  biologists 
to  whom  life  seemed  simple  enough  to  justify  the  attempt  to  derive 
the  principles  of  biology  from  the  ultimate  principles  of  physical 
science.  Best  known  among  such  attempts  is  that  of  Herbert  Spen- 
cer in  his  Principles  of  Biology  (1867). 

^  A  great  exception  to  the  general  rule  presented  in  this  section  was 
the  revival  of  animism  by  Stahl  and  the  revival,  in  France  in  the  late 
eighteenth  century,  of  vitalism.  From  this  revival  came  the  wide- 
spread doctrine  of  a  "vital  force,"  obtaining  until  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  later. 

^  Among  the  prominent  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century 
thinkers  who  influenced  especially  psychological  theory  the  attention 
of  the  student  of  the  history  of  philosophy  should  be  called  to  the 
following:  Hobbes  {fl.  1630);  Descartes  {fl.  1635);  Spinoza  {fi-  1670); 
Locke  {fi.  1670);  Berkeley  {fi.  1725);  Hume  {fl.  1750);  CondiUac 
{fl.  1755);  Hartley  {fl.  1745);  Helv^tius  {fl.  1755);  La  Mettrie  {fl. 
1750);  Kant  {fl.  1765);  Priestley  {fl.  1775);  Bentham  {fl.  1790); 
Cabanis  {fl.  1795);  and  James  Mill  {fl.  1815). 


330      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

pecially  in  France.  Descartes,  following  Greek  and  medi- 
eval tradition,  regarded  man's  states  of  consciousness  as 
phenomena  of  a  substance  radically  distinct  from  matter, 
a  spiritual  substance,  or  soul;  and  for  this  reason  and  be- 
cause of  Descartes'  great  influence,  the  doctrine  of  two 
substances,  matter  and  spirit,  and  the  resulting  belief  in 
the  irreducibihty  of  the  mental  to  the  physical  are  appro- 
priately called  Cartesian  dualism.  This  doctrine  soon  be- 
gan to  prove  an  extremely  embarrassing  theory  for  the 
Cartesian  and  many  Cartesians  therefore  began  to  draw 
the  conclusion  which  fitted  better  the  general  naturalistic 
philosophy,  that  is,  materialism.  Thus  there  have  been 
in  the  seventeenth  and  succeeding  centuries  two  closely 
related  theories  of  the  mental,  Cartesian  dualism  and  ma- 
terialism.   Let  us  study  each  briefly  in  outline. 

By  postulating  two  substances  which  cannot  interact 
Cartesian  dualism  faced  immediately  the  difficulty  of 
explaining  the  seeming  interaction  of  mind  and  body. 
If  matter  is  susceptible  of  only  mechanical  processes, 
in  other  words,  if  all  that  happens  in  the  physical  world 
is  but  the  displacement  of  particles  of  matter;  then  the 
only  consequence  of  moving  matter  is  further  motion 
either  in  the  same  body  or  in  some  body  with  which  it  has 
collided,  and,  conversely,  the  only  way  in  which  one  body 
can  be  made  to  move  from  rest  is  by  the  impact  of  some 
other  moving  body.  But  the  most  commonplace  facts  of 
daily  Hfe  seem  to  show  that  body  and  non-body,  that  is, 
mind,  interact.  Motions  in  the  body  seem  to  produce 
mental  states,  and  mental  states  seem  to  produce  motions  in 
the  body.  For  example,  a  blow  causes  pain  and  fear  causes 
flight.  Here  we  have  a  typical  rationalistic  problem,  a 
problem  upon  which  more  speculative  ingenuity  has  been  at 
work  than  perhaps  upon  any  other  problem ;  for  the  prob- 
lem has  remained  prominent  from  the  days  of  Descartes 
to  our  own  time  and  promises  to  continue  prominent  as 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  331 

long  as  Cartesian  dualism  persists.  In  all,  three  famous 
solutions  have  been  proposed,  each  an  admirable  example 
of  rationalism.  The  first  solution  denies  any  interaction 
between  th&  two  substances  and  postulates  that  God  per- 
forms aimracle' in  "each  instance  of  seeming  interaction, 
some  million  millions  per  diem;  or  it  postulates  that  at 
creation  the  two  substances  were  so  harmonized  that  for 
all  time  they  would  behave  as  though  they  were  interacting 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  were  not.  This  latter  doc- 
trine is  called  the  "pre-established  harmony;"  and  isjCitA^^ 
often  illustrated  by  the  figure  of  a  perfect  clockmaker'^^^*'^ 
who  has  made  two  clocks  that  keep  always  the  same  time 
and  so  appear  to  influence  one  another's  behavior,  whereas 
their  harmony  was  pre-established  at  the  beginning. 
Thus  God  at  creation  so  arranged  nature  that  when,  for 
example,  a  bee  stings  a  child  and  causes  certain  neural 
changes  in  the  child's  central  nervous  system,  the  spiritual 
substance  will  produce  the  pain  in  harmony  with  this 
physical  fact  and  without  any  interaction  between  brain 
and  soul!  Evidently  these  first  solutions  could  not  long 
satisfy  the  scientific  psychologist. 

The  second  solution  of  which  Spinoza  may  be  called  the 
originator  is  the  doctrine  called  parallelism.  This  doctrine 
attempts  to  straddle  the  diflaculty  of  Cartesian  duaUsm  by 
both  holding  to  duaUsm  and  rejecting  duahsm.  Though 
the  parallelist  admits  a  fundamental  difference  between 
the  physical  and  the  mental,  he  asserts  that  both  are  none 
the  less  the  phenomena  of  only  one  substance.  This  sub- 
stance is  neither  the  matter  nor  the  spirit  of  Cartesianism 
but  a  substance  of  which  matter  and  spirit  are  two  funda- 
mental types  of  manifestation.  Mind  and  body  do  not 
interact,  for  the  phj^sical  manifestations  of  the  ultimate 
substance  have  laws  and  relations  which  make  the  physical 
a  closed  system  and  in  a  similar  way  the  mental  forms  a 
closed  system.    However,  since  both  systems  are  but  two 


332      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

sides  of  the  same  thing  or  substance,  every  physical  event 
is  correlated  with  a  unique  mental  event  and  every  mental 
event  with  a  unique  physical  event  thus  giving  quite  the 
semblance  of  interaction.  That  is  to  say,  moving  matter 
does  not  produce  mental  states  and  mental  states  do  not 
produce  motions  in  matter;  but  both,  being  present  and 
correlated  with  some  unknown  state  of  the  ultimate  sub- 
stance of  which  they  are  phenomena,  have  uniform  laws 
of  sequence  and  coexistence.  Again,  inasmuch  as  the 
two  are  phenomena  of  the  same  substance,  there  is  for 
every  mental  event  a  corresponding  phj^sical  event  and 
for  every  physical  event  a  corresponding  mental  event. 
In  short,  the  paralleUst  is  forced  by  his  logic  to  proceed 
from  explaining  known  instances  of  mental  life  to  assuming 
that  mental  events  are  as  universal  as  are  physical  events, 
a  doctrine  called  panpsychism.-^ 

A  third  possible  solution  of  the  difficulty  raised  by 
Cartesian  dualism  is  to  retain  interaction  as  a  fact  and  to 
try  by  ingenuity  to  make  it  consistent  with  mechanics. 
This  doctrine  is  frankly  a  return  to  animism. 

But  the  Cartesan  could  avoid  all  of  these  difficulties 
by  giving  up  his  dualism  and  frankly  accepting  material- 
ism; and  as  the  decades  passed  many  thinkers  preferred 
this  solution.  These  materialists  were  especially  promi- 
nent in  France  from  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
on  into  the  nineteenth  century,  and  materialism  seems  to 
be  not  infrequent  among  the  intellectual  classes  at  the 
present  time.  According  to  the  materialist  the  mental 
is  not  the  manifestation  of  some  second  substance  but  is 
as  physical  as  is  any  other  process  of  the  living  organism. 
It  is  merely  an  obscure  name  of  brain  motions  or  of  chemi- 
cal-physical processes. 

Thus  far  we  have  taken  Cartesian  duahsm  and  one  of 

^  Parallelism  is  widely  held  by  psychologists  to-day  and  this  im-     j  i 
plies  that  most  psychologists  are  still  Cartesian  dualists.  — '  ' 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  333 

its  metaphysical  problems  (of  a  distinctly  rationalistic 
type)  to  illustrate  rationalism  and  naturalism  in  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  century  psychology.  Let  us  take 
a  second  important  illustration  of  rationalistic  psychology, 
the  associationist  psychology.  The  seventeenth  century 
father  of  associationism  was  Hobbes.  But  more  influen- 
tial than  Hobbes  were  Locke,  Hartley,  Hume,  and  their 
successors,  especially  in  England  and  France.  The  as- 
sociationist endeavored  to  discover  a  mechanics  of  mind 
corresponding  to  the  mechanics  of  physical  science  and  to 
do  so  needed  to  discover  a  universal  principle  by  means 
of  which  man's  mental  life  could  be  completely  explained. 
This  principle  was  found  in  sensationalism  and  the  ac- 
companying law  of  association.  Figuratively  speaking,  the 
mind  starts  an  empty  tablet  on  which  are  written  from 
childhood  to  old  age  the  sensations  of  color,  sound,  touch, 
taste,  odor  and  the  rest,  man's  organs  of  sense  and  nervous 
system  being  the  instruments  of  writing.  Then  by  a 
process  of  connecting  these  sense  data,  called  the  associa- 
tion of  ideas,  the  complex  adult  mind,  including  the  mem- 
ory, thought,  personality,  character  and  sentiments  of  the 
mature  man  is  formed.  In  the  first  place,  this  sensation- 
alism and  associationism  makes  man's  mind  the  creature  of 
his^  environment ;  for  it  makes  his  character,  knowledge, 
science  and  logic  a  matter  of  sensations  and  their  com- 
bination. In  the  second  place,  associationism  makes  the 
individual  mental  differences  between  men  also  a  matter 
solely  of  education.  Thus  it  forms  precisely  the  needed  ] 
foundation  for  the  democratic  doctrine  that  men  are  born  ( 
equal  and  that  education  alone  is  needed  to  perfect  human  ( 
life  and  to  bring  into  being  the  ideal  democratic  society.        | 

For  further  study  read: 

Paulsen,  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  74-111; 

McDougall,  W.,  Body  and  Mind,  1911,  46-148; 

Dessoir,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Psychology,  chapter  III; 


334      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Warren,  H.  C,  Mental  Association  from  Plato  to  Hume, 
Psycholog.  Review  1916,  23. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Klemm,  History  of  Psychology; 

Warren,  H.  C,  History  of  Association  Psychology  (forth- 
coming). 

6.  Rationalism  and  naturalism  in  social  and  moral 
science.^ — If  ignoring  the  details  of  the  complex  develop- 
ment of  modern  moral,  social,  political,  and  economic 
science  we  regard  only  the  general  characteristics  of  this 
development,  we  behold  the  same  general  course  from  the 
rationalistic  stage  to  the  experimental,  or  inductive  stage. 
However,  one  important  difference  between  the  develop- 
ment of  the  physical  sciences  and  that  of  the  moral  and 
social  sciences  appears;  for  the  former  became  rapidly 
experimental,  whereas  the  latter  have  but  slowly  ceased 
,  to  be  rationalistic,  or  deductive.    Indeed,  only  in  recent^ 
i  di*-'^  decades  have  students_of  morals  and  of  society  deliberately 
\f^  strivJDrtor^etltheiF^ejudices  and'assumptioT[g~asi9e7^ 

/^ftx*  _  let  the  facts  telltEeir  own"uiibiased_story  aiid^o  seek  to 
^-  C  t^  «  verify  theory  by  a ^mnne, appeal  to  fact.  Hence  though 
''^~  moral  and  social  science  was  a  prominent  part  of  modern 

European  thought  as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century  and 
continued  to  be  so  to  our  own  time;  the  history  of  these 
sciences  is  largely  a  succession  of  rival  theories  based  upon 
quite  inadequate  information  and  strongly  influenced  by 
the  prevailing  moral  and  social  struggles  and  movements 
within  the  age  or  the  nation  of  the  thinker. 

As  might   be   expected   rationalistic   thinkers  grossly 

1  Among  the  numerous  political  theorists  of  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  the  attention  of  the  student  of  the 
history  of  philosophy  should  be  called  to  the  following:  Machiavelli 
{fl.  1510);  Bodin  {fl.  1570) ;  Althusius  {fl.  1600);  Grotius  {fl.  1625); 
Milton  {fl.  1650);  Hobbes  {fl.  1630);  Spinoza  {fl.  1670);  Locke  (fl. 
1670);  Montesquieu  {fl.  1725);  Rousseau  {fi.  1750);  Adam  Smith 
Ifl.  1765);  and  Bentham  {fl.  1790). 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  335 

underestimated  the  complexity  of  man's  moral  and  social 
life;  and  as  a  consequence  the  problem  conceived  as  simple 
was  given  a  simple  and,  as  it  seemed  to  the  theorist,  a 
self-evident  solution.  These  solutions  were  based  upon 
equally  a  priori  theories  of  the  nature  of  man.  In  general, 
man  seemed  a  presocial  individual  by  nature;  that  is  to 
say,  man  seemed  older  than  society  and  seemed  to  be  by 
nature  an  individualist  that  had  to  be  socialized  to  make 
even  rudimentary  society  possible.  Put  in  still  other 
words,  man  seemed  more  like  the  lonely  carnivora  than 
like  the  herd_animal  which  he  is  now  known  to  be.  Again, 
man  was' conceivedTo~be  by  nature  either  a  stmggler  to 
preserve  self  or  a  seeker  after  pleasure;  and  therefore  social 
theory  tended  to  find  in  the  one  or  the  other  of  the  cor- 
responding instincts  the  controlling  factor  in  the  origin  and 
development  of  society.  To-day  we  know  man  to  have 
neither  instinct,  but  rather  to  have  many  inborn  traits 
that  lead  him  to  seek  food,  to  fight  or  avoid  certain  dangers, 
to  compete  for  social  approval  and  to  be  satisfied  or  an- 
noyed in  certain  situations.  Again,  the  rationalistic 
thinker  tended  to  regard  man  as  decidedly  more  rational 
than  man  is  and  thus  to  underestimate  grossly  the  part 
played  by  instinct  and  blind  behavior  in  developing  morals 
and  society.  One  famous  illustration  of  this  tendency  was 
the  contract  theory  of  the  origin  of  society.  By  this 
theory  society  was  thougETToTiave  arisen  in  somewhat 
the  same  way  as  that  in  which  two  men  may  form  a  part- 
nership and  sign  the  requisite  agreement.  The  origin  of 
society  was  an  essentially  rational  contract  whose  terms 
could  be  identified  by  the  theorist.  Hence  a  deduction 
from  these  assumed  terms  enabled  the  theorist  to  criticise 
the  moral  and  political  movements  of  his  day  and  to  show 
wherein  they  agreed  or  disagreed  with  the  terms  of  the 
contract  upon  which  society  as  such  rested  either  in  fact 
or  in  principle. 


336      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  further  stvdy  read: 

Paulsen,  F.,  System  of  Ethics,  126-215; 
Stephen,  L.,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  Vol.  II. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Dunning,  W.  A.,  History  of  Political  Theories,  from  Luther 

to  Montesquieu; 
Davidson,  W.  L.,  Pohtical  Thought  in  England  from  Ben- 

tham  to  J.  S.  Mill  (Home  University  Library) ; 
Sidgwick,    H,,    Development   of   European  Pohty,   316- 
377. 

7.  The  development  of  toleration. — The  seventeenth 
century^  the  centur^of  ratjonalism,  was  both  a  time  of 
religious  inToIerance_and  a  tiine  in  which  the  spirit  of 
toleration  hadTts~birth.  State  and  Church  for  centuries 
pastTyes,  for^l  time  past,  had  been  united;  and  men  had 
not  come  truly  to  dissociate  the  two.  For  the  savage  and 
the  barbarian,  religion  is  distinctly  a  group,  or  tribal 
matter,  and  genuinely  personal  religion  is  only  incidental 
to  folk  religion  and  worship.  Hence  Church  and  State 
issued  from  the  middle  ages  in  closest  alliance,  and  hence 
the  religious  revolution  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  was  a  serious  political  as  well  as  religious 
metamorphosis.  The  general  attitude  of  the  people  of 
the  seventeenth  century  was  that  the  State  had  both 
the  right  and  the  duty  to  insist  upon  a  state  rehgion 
and  upon  the  conformity  of  all  citizens  to  the  doctrine, 
discipline  and  worship  of  the  state  church.  In  contrast 
with  the  attitude  taken  by  society,  a  new  attitude  of 
religious  tolerance  was  taken  by  a  few  thinkers  in  this 
enlightened  age;  and  because  of  the  new  spirit  of  en- 
lightenment and  because  of  the  economic  and  political 
transformation  Europe  was  undergoing,  these  leaders 
won  their  cause  during  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  337 

For  further  study  read: 

Bury,  History  of  Freedom  of  Thought  (Home  University 

Library) ; 
Lecky,  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism,  chapter  IV. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Schaff,  P.,  Progress  of  Religious  Freedom  as  Shown  in  the 

History  of  Toleration  Acts,  1889; 
Milton,  Areopagitica  (ed.  by  Hales); 
Locke,  Letters  concerning  Toleration. 

8.  The  idea  of  progress. — Perhaps  the  greatest  intellec- 
tual achievement  resulting  from  the  complex  intellectual 
forces  which  we  have  been  studying  was  the  rise  of  the 
idea  of  progress.  In  ancient  days  nations  progressed  but 
they  did  so  unreflectively,  they  did  so  without  making 
progress  itself  an  enterprise.  The  Christian  Church  of 
the  ancient  and  medieval  world  had  her  mission  directed 
toward  another  world  and  cared  nothing  about  progress 
in  this  world  nor  taught  her  children  to  care.  But  in  the, 
seventeenth  cenUnrmen  discovered  the  ideal_ofprogress. 
The  thought  dawned^in  their  minds  that  far  greater 
achievements  were  open  to  mankind  than  those  yet  at- 
tained in  science,  morals,  government  and  society.  They 
felt  themselves  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  age,  an  age  in 
which  research  and  reason  would  discover  ways  and 
means  to  make  the  life  of  man  far  better  and  far  nobler 
than  it  had  ever  been.  Above  all,  they  felt  that  science 
was  to  be  the  chief  instrument.  As  we  look  back  upon 
their  dreams  and  hopes,  we  see  that  the  task  was  far  more 
difficult  and  the  problem  far  more  complex  than  they 
knew  or  could  know  it  to  be.  Yet,  Utopian  as  were  their 
thoughts,  the  results  have  really  been  far  more  than  they 
ever  dreamed.  The  sciences  they  began  have  revolu- 
tionized the  world,  the  struggles  for  tolerance,  democracy 
and  freedom  which  they  commenced  have  brought  a  hu- 
manitarianism  and  an  ideal  of  social  progress  and  ejffi- 


338      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ciency  they  little  foresaw.  And  the  idea  of  progress  has 
become  not  merely  the  dream  of  a  few  thinkers  but  the 
conscious  enterprise  of  the  nations. 

For  further  stvdy  read: 

Brailsford,  H.  N.,  Shelley,  Godwin,  and  their  Circle  (Home 

University  Library); 
FHnt,  History  of  the  Philosophy  of  History,  87-104. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Bacon,  Advancement  of  Learning; 

Herder,  Ideen  zur  Geschichte  der  Menschheit; 

Condorcet,  Tableau  historique  des  progres  de  I'esprit  hu- 

main; 
Delvaille,  J.,  Essai  sur  I'historique  de  I'idee  de  Progres 

jusqu'  a  la  fin  du  XVIHieme  Siecle,  1910. 

9.  The  effect  of  naturalism  upon  the  general  intellec- 
tual life  of  the  modern  world. — In  conclusion,  let  us  ask 
what  has  been  the  effect  of  the  rationalistic  and  naturalistic 
movement  upon  the  general  intellectual  life  of  the  modern 
world?  The  answer  can  be  given  in  one  word,  enlighten- 
ment. Enlightenment  has  denoted  many  traits^ol  which 
five  are  m^st  propi infant,,  ^irst^  it  has  denoted  the  elimr 
inatjng  of  superstition  and  the  acquiring  of  a  distinctly 
naturalistic,  or  scientific  attitude  toward  a  vast  number 
of  the  events  and  objects  that  form  our  environment. 
The  processes  of  nature  from  the  phenomena  of  the  dis- 
tant heavens  and  from  the  phenomena  of  the  weather  to 
the  causes  and  cure  of  disease  and  to  the  growth  and 
education  of  the  child's  intellect  and  character  have  come 
to  seem  to  the  intelligent  man  a  proper  object  of  research 
and  of  scientific  explanation.  Even  though  prescience 
obtains  in  limited  fields,  this  change  from  medieval  pre- 
scientific  and  barbaric  belief  and  custom  has  been  a  vast 
transformation.  Second,  enUghtenment  has  denoted  the 
freeing  of  personal  religion  from  that  of  the  group,  at 


RATIONALISM  AND  NATURALISM  339 

least  to  a  large  extent,  and  the  freeing  of  thought.  No 
doubt  much  religious  intolerance  still  obtains  in  fact;  but 
among  the  most  cultured  peoples  complete  legal  and  polit- 
ical freedom  have  been  secured  for  religious  non- 
conformists, and  Church  and  State  have  tended  to  become 
dissociated.  Third,  enlightenment  has  denoted  the  spread 
of  humanitarianism.  This  has  been  especially  evident  in 
the  changein  customs  of  treating  the  poor,  the  debtor, 
the  insane,  the  delinquent  and  the  criminal.  True,  much 
that  is  barbarous  still  remains;  but  the  change  in  these 
customs  during  the  past  three  centuries  has  been  vast. 
Again,  humanitarianism  has  been  evident  in  the  growing 
abhorrence  of  war  and  its  cruelties.  Finally,  humani- 
tarianism has  been  evident  in  the  general  effort  to  amel- 
iorate the  lot  of  the  wage  earner  and  the  peasant,  and  to 
educate  the  masses,  fourth,  the  enlightenment  has  in- 
^creased  utilitarianism.  This  has  been  manifest  not  only 
in  the  vast  mdustrial,'  commercial  and  engineering  enter- 
prises of  the  modern  world  but  in  the  multitudinous  lesser 
enterprises  from  the  exterminating  of  mosquitoes  to  the 
exterminating  of  disease  and  from  the  growth  of  social 
efficiency  to  the  rise  of  utilitarian  curricula  and  rational 
methods  of  instruction  in  schools  and  higher  institu- 
tions of  learning.  Fifth  and  finally,  the  enlighten- 
ment has  denoted  Ijie  spread  of  democrac;^  and  demo- 
cratic  laws  and  institutions.  It  has  given  us  the^gospef 
of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  and  of  economic 
freedom. 

For  further  study  read: 

Brailsford,  H.  N.,  Shelley,  Godwin,  and  their  Circle; 
Morley,  J.,  essays  on  Voltaire,  Diderot,  Rousseau,  and  Con- 
dorcet. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Stephen,  L.,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century; 


340      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Lecky,  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism; 
MacDonald,  F.,  Studies  in  the  France  of  Voltaire  and  Rous- 
seau, 1895; 
L6vy-Bruhl,  History  of  Modern  Philosopliy  in  France; 
Cambridge  Modern  History,  Vol.  VIII,  chapters  I  and  XXV. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

PHENOMENALISM,    POSITIVISM,    AND    IDEALISM 

1.  Introductory. — A  second  philosophical  movement 
of  great  importance  became  prominent  in  the  eighteenth 
century  having  its  source  in  the  earher  rationalistic  and 
naturalistic  movement.  This  second  movement  included 
at  least  three  important  tendencies  which  are  named  re- 
spectively phenomenalism,  empiricism  and  its  resulting 
positivism,  and  idealism.  All  three  were  closely  related. 
Indeed,  the  two  latter  tendencies  developed  directly  out 
of  the  first,  that  is  out  of  phenomenalism. 

2.  The  terms,  Phenomenalism  and  Empiricism  defined. 
— By  phenomenalism  is  meant  the  doctrine  that  the 
immediate  object  of  all  our  knowledge  is  mental,  a  doctrine 
which  follows  logically  from  the  conception  of  the  mental 
held  by  the  intellectual  world  from  the  time  of  the  Greek 
thinkers.  Prescientific  man  with  his  animistic  hypothesis 
leaves  the  nature  of  perception  and  knowing  a  negligible 
and  comfortable  mystery;  but  as  science  arose,  thought- 
ful men  distinguished  between  "the  appearance  of  things" 
and  "the  things  themselves"  or  between  the  objects  of 
sense  and  the  entities  of  science.^  This  distinction  be- 
tween the  world  of  sense  and  the  world  of  science  led  men 
to  attend  to  what  we  call  our  mental  states  and  to  ask: 
What  are  these  mental  states  and  how  are  they  related  to 

^  In  modem  phrase,  as  I  look  at  a  piece  of  wood  I  do  not  see  the 
atoms  of  the  chemist,  or  as  I  hear  a  sound  I  do  not  behold  the  air 
waves  of  which  the  physicist  speaks,  or  again,  as  I  see  the  room  it 
has  acute  and  obtuse  angles  in  its  comers  whereas  the  architect's 
plans  imply  that  all  these  angles  are  right  angles. 

841 


342      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  entities  of  science?  In  answering  this  question,  no 
doubt  men  continued  to  be  much  influenced  by  animism; 
for  animism  led  men  to  think  of  their  mental  states  as 
states  not  of  things  without  the  body  but  as  states  of  an 
entity  within  the  body,  the  soul,  and  it  led  men  to  think 
that  the  mental  state  and  the  external  object  may  be 
neither  similar  nor  numerically  identical.  Thus  a  dualism 
arose  between  the  world  within  the  naind.  the  mental 
states,"  and  the  world  without,  the  entities  of_science. 
What  the  mind  "experiences  is  only  mental,  its  own  states, 
its  feelings,  its  sensations,  and  its  thoughts;  whereas  the 
world  of  things  without  remains  without,  never  entering 
the  soul.  The  break  between  the  two  worlds  is  complete 
and  a  skepticism  arises  which  questions  whether  or  not  we 
can  know  aught  but  our  own  mental  life.  In  short,  the 
only  world  we  experience  is  a  subjective  world,  a  world  of 
mind  and  not  a  world  of  things;  and  we  have  no  guarantee 
that  the  two  worlds  in  any  way  resemble  one  another. 
By  empiricism  is  meant  the  denial  of  rationalism's  claim 
that  man  has  in  his  mind  the  a  priori  principles  by  which 
science  can  get,  through  reflection  or  intuition,  its  fun- 
damental and  eternal  groundwork.  Empiricism  asserts 
that  man  comes  into  this  world  innocent  of  knowledge, 
and  that  all  the  knowledge  he  ever  gains,  is  what  expe- 
rience brings  him.  In  other  words,  what  experience 
teaches,  man  can  learn;  but  what  experience  does  not 
teach,  man  can  never  know.  This  conclusion  at  once 
leads  on  to  the  important  question :  Does  not  science,  and 
especially  rationalistic  science,  pretend  to  know  more 
than  experience  actually  teaches?  Or  reworded.  Should 
not  science  be  cautious  to  formulate  her  doctrines  so  that 
she  never  even  seems  to  assert  more  than  man  can  literally 
experience?  The  affirmative  answer  to  this  question  is 
called  positivism.  But  this  answer  leads  in  turn  to  a  sec- 
ond question:  If  science  may  not  go  beyond  experience, 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    343 

can  she  explain  what  we  do  experience?  The  positivist  re- 
plies: No.  Science  can  describe  hut  science  cannot  ex-plain 
that  which  is  experienced.  In  short,  science  is  merely  the 
systematic  description  of  man's  experience;  and  therefore 
science  when  it  pretends  to  be  an  explanation  of  what  man 
experiences,  becomes  an  invalid  rationalism. 

Let  me  expound  this  important  doctrine  of  positivism 
at  greater  length.  As  phenomenalism  maintains,  man 
experiences  only  his  own  mental  states  and  their  order; 
therefore,  the  positivist  points  out,  man  does  not  expe- 
rience the  logical  or  causal  connections  between  things 
in  nature  or  between  nature  and  experience.  That  is  to 
say,  nature  does  not  reveal  such  connections  in  man's  sen- 
sory experience;  and  therefore  when  he  tries  to  ascertain 
her  laws  he  is  obliged  to  go  beyond  the  evidence  the  senses 
furnish.  All  that  man  experiences  is  the  mere  succession  of 
events.  He  sees  ice  melt  in  the  sunshine,  but  he  does  not  see 
why  ice  melts.  He  sees  the  pendulum  swing  back  and  forth 
in  equal  intervals,  but  does  not  see  why  it  so  swings.  He 
sees  that  his  arm  moves  when  he  so  wills,  but  he  does  not 
see  why.  Moreover,  he  cannot  appeal  to  innate  ideas  to 
help  him  to  explain  his  experiences ;  for  there  are  no  innate 
ideas  such  as  the  rationalist  claims  to  possess  and  there  are 
no  ideas  in  man's  mind  corresponding  to  the  abstract 
entities  of  the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences.  For 
example,  man  has  no  innate  insight  into  the  fundamental 
principles  of  mechanics.  In  fact,  he  often  believes  what 
physical  science  denies,  the  spontaneous  origin  and  cessa- 
tion of  motion,  the  freedom  of  the  will  and  similar  animistic 
hypotheses.  Again,  man  cannot  picture  empty  space, 
infinity,  matter  (that  is,  with  all  qualities  abstracted), 
causal  necessity  or  substance.  These  are  mere  words  or 
symbols  and  not  genuine  ideas.  Finally,  it  is  not  essential 
that  man  should  have  the  information  rationalism  pre- 
tends to  furnish.    All  man  needs  to  know  in  order  to  pros- 


344      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

per  is  precisely  what  experience  is  capable  of  giving,  the 
succession  of  events.  Thus  to  avoid  the  fire  man  needs  to 
experience  what  happens  when  he  touches  fire;  but  he  does 
not  need  to  know  the  ultimate  rationalistic  explanation  of 
why  fire  burns. ^ 

These  two  doctrines,  phenomenalism  and  positivism, 
sound  astonishingly  unlike  rationalism;  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  they  grew  directly  out  of  the  tenets  of  the  rational- 
istic movement  and  belong  to  that  movement.  Descartes' 
dualism  between  mind  and  body,  the  so-called  "Cartesian 
dualism"  was  a  sufficient  starting  point;  for  it  forced 
the  philosopher  to  enquire  into  the  nature  and  possibiHty 
of  science.^ 

3.  Phenomenalism  and  Idealism. — The  result  of  this 

^  In  the  phrases  of  recent  thought,  man,  like  any  other  organism, 
has  the  traits  that  enable  him  to  survive  and  to  reproduce  his  kind; 
and  this  is  aU  that  nature  requires  of  him.  From  the  standpoint  of 
nature  it  is  no  more  necessary  for  him  to  know  the  real  world  or  to  ex- 
plain that  world  than  it  is  necessary  for  the  oak  to  know  meteorology 
or  the  chemistry  of  the  soil.  What  is  necessary  is  that  the  oak  have 
the  responses  that  will  make  it  thrive.  As  long  as  this  condition  is 
fulfilled  what  matters  it  that  the  oak  is  ignorant?  The  same  is  true 
of  man.  He  has  the  system  of  responses  called  knowledge;  and  all 
that  is  required  of  his  knowledge  is  to  lead  him  to  the  right  responses. 
Insanity  woiild  be  precisely  as  valuable  biologically  as  sanity,  or 
delusion  as  correct  insight,  provided  the  resulting  responses  adjusted 
man  to  environment,  a  fact  to  which  the  oak  bears  witness,  for  in  its 
complete  ignorance  the  oak  adjusts  itself  to  the  conditions  of  life 
with  a  skill  far  beyond  the  wisdom  of  the  most  learned  scientist  to 
adjust  it.  To  sum  up,  according  to  positivism  man  can  but  watch  his 
sensations,  mark  their  order  and  secure  accurate  descriptions  of  the 
world  called  our  experience.  And  the  thing  he  cannot  do,  is  to  explain 
the  things  themselves  that  lie  beyond  this  experience  and  that  do  not 
reveal  to  him  what  they  are  or  why  they  are. 

2  Among  the  most  prominent  Cartesian  students  of  human  knowl- 
edge in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  are:  Descartes 
ifl.  1635) ;  Malebranche  {fl.  1680) ;  Spinoza  (fl.  1670);  Locke  (fl.  1670); 
Leibniz  (fl.  1685);  Berkeley  {fl.  1725);  Hume  (fl.  1750);  Kant  (fl. 
1765). 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    345 

enquiry,  beginning  with  Descartes  and  lasting  to  living 
Cartesian  dualists,  has  been  a  revival  of  ancient  phe- 
nomenahsm,  of  a  phenomenalism  similar  to  that  of 
Democritus.  It  has  been  aptly  nicknamed  from  an  illus- 
tration of  its  doctrine,  "the  metaphysics  of  the  telephone 
exchange."  The  phenomenaHst,  or  subjectivist  seems  to 
assert  that  each  mind  is  like  an  imaginary  telephone  op- 
erator born  a  lonely  Robinson  Crusoe  not  on  an  island 
but  in  a  telephone  exchange.  Here  this  person  has  through- 
out hfe  been  receiving  the  messages  from  a  world  that  he 
has  never  seen  and  by  hypothesis  never  can  see,  or  ex- 
perience in  any  way  other  than  through  his  telephone 
instruments.  From  these  messages  he  may  infer  that 
there  are  other  Robinson  Crusoes  and  that  there  is  a  vast 
physical  but  unperceived  world  in  which  he  himself  lives. 
At  least,  it  is  within  the  conditions  of  the  illustration  that 
he  may  infer  such  an  external  world.  But  two  other  pos- 
sible inferences  remain  also  within  these  conditions.  He 
may  infer  that  only  these  Robinson  Crusoes,  including 
himself,  exist;  or  he  may  infer  that  the  world  that  he  di- 
rectly perceives,  namely,  his  exchange  and  its  instruments, 
are  the  entire  universe  and  that  the  messages  he  seems 
to  be  receiving  are  the  direct  product  of  the  receiving 
instruments  themselves. 

That  is  to  say,  the  Cartesian  dualist  makes  every 
mental  state  purely  subjective,  he  makes  every  mental 
state  the  possession  only  of  the  mind  whose  state  it  is; 
and  therefore  he  seems  to  assert  for  each  mind  a  condition 
of  affairs  quite  comparable  to  the  lot  of  the  aforementioned 
Robinson  Crusoe.  Each  man  perceives  or  is  aware  of  his 
own  mental  states  and  of  nothing  else  in  the  whole  universe. 
He  is  aware  of  nothing  else;  for  by  definition  whatever  he 
is  aware  of,  is  a  mental  state,  and  by  theory,  or  assumption, 
mental  states  have  no  existence  other  than  in  the  mind 
whose  states  they  are.    If  this  then  be  the  lot  of  each  mind. 


346      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  philosopher  may  make  any  of  the  following  inferences : 
(1)  He  may  infer  with  the  ignorant  and  thoughtless  that 
our  mental  states,  or  let  us  say  the  world  of  our  experience, 
duplicates  an  objective  world  that  in  the  main  would  be 
what  it  is  whether  or  not  we  had  been  born.  In  short,  he 
may  infer  that  to  all  intents  and  purposes  we  do  perceive 
the  objective  world.  (2)  With  Democritus,  Descartes  and 
Locke  he  may  infer  that  there  is  an  objective  world  and 
that  by  thought  or  experiment  the  scientist  can  learn  its 
nature,  though  admitting  that  man  can  never  perceive 
or  directly  experience  this  world.  Thus  he  decides  that 
the  objective  world  is  an  inferred  world,  a  world  of  science 
quite  unhke  the  world  of  perception,  or  in  Greek,  a  nou- 
menal  world ;  whereas  the  experienced  world  is  phenomenal. 
As  a  rule  this  objective  world  is  thought  of  as  the  world 
of  matter  and  energy  as  conceived  by  physical  science. 
(3)  He  may  infer  that  there  is  no  such  non-mental  world. 
What  the  mind  directly  perceives  is  by  definition  mental, 
and  therefore  we  are  assured  of  the  existence  only  of  the 
mental.  Indeed,  the  physical  is  a  superfluous  hypothesis. 
This  doctrine  is  usually  called  idealism.  When  the  ques- 
tion is  carried  still  farther  and  one  asks  regarding  the 
relation  of  the  universe  to  this  mental  world  which  we 
directly  experience,  at  least  three  possible  answers  may 
be  given,  (a)  The  philosopher  may  say:  "I  alone  exist, 
for  only  my  mental  states  are  perceived  by  me  and  I  can 
account  for  the  universe  of  my  experience  as  literally  only 
my  experience."  This  doctrine  is  called  soUpsism.  (b)  He 
may  say:  "Only  minds  exist,  and  the  world  that  I  ex- 
perience is  but  a  society  of  minds  whose  interaction  with 
one  another  gives  me  the  world  of  my  experience.  This 
world  is  indeed  a  different  world  as  we  examine  it  comparing 
one  man's  experience  with  another's;  but  none  the  less  it  is 
never  the  lonely  creation  of  one  mind  but  is  the  creation 
of  a  group  of  minds."     (c)  He  may  say:  "My  mind  is- 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    347 

part  of  a  larger  mind,  a  universal  mind;  and  my  experience 
and  the  world  revealed  in  my  experience  can  be  explained 
as  part  of  the  larger  experience  of  that  mind.  That  is  to 
say,  there  is  a  world  beyond  my  individual  experience  but 
not  the  physical  world  of  the  dualist  which  by  definition 
transcends  all  possible  experience,  but  simply  the  world 
of  a  larger  experience  into  which  my  experience  would 
itself  grow  could  it  keep  on  forever  in  the  growth  begun 
in  childhood  and  lasting  to  my  present  state  of  partly  or- 
ganized experience.  In  still  other  words,  the  universe  is 
my  experience  grown  until  it  has  reached  the  stage  or 
limit  called  a  universal  and  perfect  experience.  My  pres- 
ent experience  is  of  course  imperfect,  incomplete,  and 
partial.  Hence  I  can  contrast  with  my  experience  another 
experience,  an  ideal  one,  one  implicit  in  my  imperfect 
experience,  the  universal,  or  absolute  experience." 

The  statements  made  thus  far  in  this  section  would 
probably  seem  startling  or  absurd  to  the  intelligent  but 
hard-headed  man  of  affairs.  He  might  say,  if  that  is  the 
result  of  philosophical  thought  the  less  we  have  of  it  the 
better;  but  in  so  saying  he  would  do  a  gross  injustice  to 
the  facts  of  Ufe  and  to  the  part  this  problem  has  played 
in  the  drama  of  European  thought.  Even  the  most  hard- 
headed  man  has  to  admit  the  following: — It  is  a  fact  that 
each  man  in  some  sense  or  other  lives  in  his  own  private 
world.  Again,  it  is  a  fact  that  in  some  sense  or  other  the 
world  of  each  man's  experience  has  been  socially  formed, 
is,  in  other  words,  the  resultant  of  the  interplay  of  minds. 
Again,  it  is  a  fact  that  in  some  sense  or  other  the  world 
has  kept  growing  in  the  mind  of  the  human  race,  that  we 
look  forward  to  further  growth  toward  some,  perhaps  un- 
imaginable, limit;  and  that  we  may  in  some  sense  or  other 
speak  properly  of  our  experience  being  part  of  a  larger  or 
universal  experience.  Finally,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  world 
we  talk  about  most  frequently  in  science  is  in  some  sense 


348      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

or  other  not  the  world  of  man's  perception.  Now  as 
students  of  the  history  of  philosophical  thought  it  is  not 
our  business  to  ascertain  in  what  sense  these  matters  are 
facts;  but  it  is  our  business  to  note  in  what  sense  the  in- 
tellectual classes  of  Europe  have  tended  to  believe  them 
to  be  facts  and  to  note  the  role  the  resulting  philosophical 
dogma  has  played  in  the  drama  of  the  past  three  centuries 
of  European  thought.  Let  us  then  turn  directly  to  these 
matters. 

4.  Phenomenalism  in  modern  thought. — Common 
sense  has  remained  little  concerned  with  this  problem  of 
phenomenalism,  or  subjectivism;  but  most  men  have  re- 
mained thus  unconcerned  chiefly  because,  through  long 
racial  training,  they  have  socially  inherited  workable  solu- 
tions of  the  most  frequent  and  pressing  problems  raised 
by  subjectivism.  In  short,  we  manage  the  ordinary  affairs 
of  daily  Hfe  so  skillfully  and  unreflectively  that  we  are 
able  to  ignore  the  difference  between  what  we  call  "things" 
or  "reaHties"  and  "their  appearance." 

The  steps  beyond  commonsense  were  taken,  at  least 
most  prominently,  by  Descartes  and  later  by  John  Locke. 
These  steps,  as  we  have  seen,  proceeded  from  Cartesian 
dualism  as  an  absolute  or  fixed  stepping  stone  whose  im- 
mobility and  security  were  never  questioned.  These  few 
steps  brought  Descartes  and  Locke  to  the  position  vir- 
tually of  Democritus,  to  a  phenomenalism  which  leaves 
the  true  nature  of  the  non-mental  world  to  be  ascertained 
by  scientific  research.  I  believe  it  can  be  said  without 
question  that  this  has  remained  to  the  present  day  the  ac- 
cepted philosophical  position  of  the  vast  majority  of  scientific 
men. 

However,  it  has  been  easy  to  take  one  step  more  and  to 
reach  an  agnostic  phenomenalism,  or  positivism.  As  we 
have  seen,  according  to  positivism  the  only  world  man 
can  know  is  the  world  of  his  experience,  and  the  task 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    349 

of  science  is  not  to  reveal  a  world  beyond  percep- 
tion but  merely  to  invent  a  system  by  means  of  which 
to  organize  or  to  describe  the  world  of  experience.^ 
This  extreme  phenomenalism,  agnosticism,  or  positivism 
commenceOo  appear  prominently  in  European  thoughtj^ 
in  the  writings  of  David  Hume  and  of  Immanuel  Kant, 
that  is,  in  the  middle  and  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth" 
century.  In  the  nineteenth  century  it  has  been  especially 
prominent  in  Germany,  France,  and  England  and  is  held 
to-day  by  some  of  the  ablest  scientists. 

The  next  step  in  the  development  of  subjectivism  pro- 
ceeds beyond  phenomenaHsm  to  idealism.  Idealism  asserts 
that  if  the  world  of  experience  is  mental  then  all  is  men- 
tal, for  "  to  be  beyond  the  world  of  experience  "  is  mean- 
ingless being  equivalent  to  "  the  unthinkable."  Reality 
is  experience,  is  mental.  This  famous  step  in  human 
thought  was  taken  by  Berkeley  and  although  taken  by 
others  in  his  time  will  perhaps  always  be  associated  with 
his  name.^ 

1  This  organization  may  be  the  work  of  inborn  organizing  faculties 
in  man's  intellect,  giving  man  a  priori  or  necessary  principles  of 
science  (a  doctrine  called  transcendentalism);  or  this  organization 
may  be  based  upon  the  general  biological  tendencies  that  lead  man  to 
adjust  himself  to  environment.  In  this  latter  case  the  principle  at 
work  is  biological  utility,  or  convenience.  The  famous  author  of 
transcendentalism  was  Immanuel  Kant.  The  most  noted  upholders 
of  the  latter  doctrine  have  been  the  contemporary  thinkers,  Ernst 
Mach,  Karl  Pearson  and  Henri  Poincar^. 

"^  Idealism  has  been  prominent  in  nineteenth  century  thought 
though  by  no  means  as  prominent  as  phenomenalism.  However,  it 
has  been  decidedly  influential  among  philosophers  in  the  narrow 
sense.  Of  the  idealists  two  important  schools  deserve  to  be  re- 
membered by  every  student  of  the  history  of  philosophy:  first,  the 
Berkeleian  school,  especially  in  England;  second,  the  German  ideal- 
ists and  their  followers,  especially  in  England  and  America.  The  in- 
fluence of  idealism  upon  the  general  intellectual  life  of  Europe  since 
the  eighteenth  century  has  been  decidedly  one-sided.  It  has  been 
marked  in  the  fields  of  pohtical  and  social  science,  in  ethics  and  reU- 


350      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

5.  The  subjectivistic  problem  of  knowledge. — One  of 

the  most  remarkable  influences  of  subjectivism  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  belief  in  the  importance  of  the  problem  of 
the  nature,  validity  and  limits  of  human  knowledge.  Even 
Descartes  was  troubled  with  the  problem,  whether  or  not 
science  is  possible.  As  a  rationalist  his  bias  in  favor  of 
science  saved  him  from  skepticism,  but  the  modern  reader 
can  hardly  fail  to  feel  that  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas  is 
a  treacherous  life  raft  by  which  to  rescue  science  from 
the  waves  of  skepticism.  Locke,  in  his  immortal  book, 
bore  witness  to  how  urgent  the  problem  of  knowledge 
could  become  to  a  good  Cartesian  of  the  second  generation. 
The  chasm  left  by  Cartesian  dualism  between  the  knowing 
mind  and  its  object  was  clearly  perceived  and  Locke  was 
perplexed  as  to  how  to  build  a  trustworthy  bridge  to  span 
the  chasm.  If  the  only  objects  of  direct  knowledge  are 
mental  states,  by  what  indirect  means  can  man  know  the 
non-mental  object?  Kant,  another  Cartesian,  reached  the 
conclusion  of  the  matter,  the  world  of  things  in  themselves, 
the  world  that  Descartes  and  physical  scientists  had  re- 
garded as  the  true  object  of  their  research,  is  quite  un- 
knowable. 

But  the  important  fact  is  that  all  Cartesians  were  forced 
to  make  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  knowledge  the  major 
part  of  their  philosophical  thought,  that  they  were  forced 
to  make  this  problem  prior  to  all  other  scientific  research, 
and  that  they  were  forced  to  drift  farther  and  farther 
away  from  commonsense  and  actual  scientific  methods  and 
traditions  in  reaching  the  remarkable  and  perplexing 
solutions  which  one  after  another  were  offered  to  the  world 
by  such  great  Cartesian  thinkers  as  Locke,  Berkeley, 
Hume,  and  Kant.     From  Locke  to  the  present  time  the 

gion  and  in  the  romantic  movement;  whereas  its  influence  upon 
mathematical,  physical  and  biological  science  has  been  quite  negligi- 
ble. 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    351 

theory  of  knowledge  has  stood  in  the  forefront  of  Euro- 
pean philosophical  thought  and  has  tended  to  divorce  the 
philosophical  thinker  from  those  men  of  scientific  research 
who  have  gone  calmly  on  their  way  little  troubled  by  the 
difficulties  and  perplexities  of  the  students  of  knowledge 
and  proving  by  their  remarkable  success  that  science 
can  flourish  though  her  nature  and  her  very  right  to  exist 
are  causing  some  men  profound  anxiety  and  perplexity. 

For  further  study  read: 

Pearson,  K.,  Grammar  of  Science,   3d   ed.,    1911,   espec. 

chapters  II  and  III; 
Berkeley,  Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Philonous; 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  466-486; 
Watson,  J.,  Selections  from  Kant,  1-222; 
Russell,  B.,  Problems  of  Philosophy   (Home  University 

Library) . 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Smith,  Studies  in  the  Cartesian  Philosophy; 

Paulsen,  F.   (Creighton  and  Lefevre  transl.)     Im.  Kant, 

His  Life  and  Doctrine,  1910; 
Locke,  Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding  (Calkins' 

selections  from); 
Berkeley,  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge. 

6.  Empiricism  and  positivism. — With  Locke  and  his 
successors  began  the  important  philosophical  movement, 
empiricism.  As  we  have  seen,  it  was  governed  by  a  careful 
study  of  the  actual  content  of  man's  mental  states.  Such 
an  examination  led  Locke  to  dispute  correctly  the  presence 
of  innate  ideas  and  to  express  some  perplexity  regarding 
several  of  the  terms  of  science,  such  as  substance,  energy, 
infinite  space  and  others.  In  his  successor  Berkeley  the 
revolt  against  rationalism  became  open  and  extreme. 
Berkeley  could  not  find  among  man's  mental  states  any 
abstract  ideas  and  from  this  absence  of  abstract  ideas  he 
inferred  that  those  terms  of  science  which  presuppose  such 


352      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ideas,  are  meaningless  words.  Matter  robbed  of  all 
empirical  content,  such  as  color,  is  an  abstract  and  im- 
possible idea  and  the  matter  of  mechanics  is  so  robbed. 
Empty  space  and  time  and  infinity  are  similar  abstract 
terms  and  are  also  mere  words.  Therefore  abstract  me- 
chanics is  mere  words.  Finally,  the  best  known  and  most 
thoroughgoing  positivism,  for  siich  this  extreme  empiri- 
cism had  already  become,  was  that  of  the  great  English 
thinker  David  Hume.  He  agreed  quite  with  Berkeley 
regarding  the  impossibility  of  abstract  mental  states;  and 
he  submitted  some  of  the  fondest  notions  of  rationalism  to 
a  fatal  criticism.  These  notions  were  especially  those  of 
substance  and  causation.  Search  the  mental  states  of 
man  and  nowhere  do  we  find  any  idea  of  substance  or 
necessary  causal  connection,  or  efficacy.  An  orange  we 
can  perceive,  but  rob  the  orange  of  all  its  qualities  and  the 
remaining  substance  in  which  these  qualities  are  said  to 
inhere  has  become,  as  far  as  man's  ideas  are  concerned,  a 
mere  zero.  Thus  when  man  uses  the  word,  substance,  he 
means  no  more  than  the  empu-ical  fact  that  the  qualities 
cohere  in  the  visible,  tactual  and  otherwise  sensible  ob- 
ject. In  short,  the  term  substance  has  no  rightful  place 
in  science  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  cause.  We  perceive 
that  one  event  follows  another  or  coexists  with  another, 
but  we  never  perceive  that  it  has  to  do  so  or  why  it  does  so. 
No  scrutiny  of  what  we  actually  perceive  reveals  any  other 
connection  between  events  than  the  empirical  fact  of 
temporal  and  spatial  contiguity  and  of  similarity  and 
difference.  From  no  event  can  we  deduce  its  consequent. 
Apart  from  experience  the  most  careful  examination  of  a 
piece  of  bread  would  not  tell  whether  or  not  it  will  nourish 
or  for  that  matter  whether  or  not  it  will  blow  the  universe 
to  star  dust.  The  wisest  man  that  ever  lived  could  deduce 
nothing  merely  from  bread  other  than  the  content  as 
perceived.    In  short,  force,  energy,  causal  necessity  and  all 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    353 

rationalistic  explanation  of  what  has  to  be  and  of  why 
things  are  as  they  are  and  do  as  they  do,  are  mere  pseudo- 
science  and  should  be  abandoned.  All  that  man  can  do 
according  to  Hume's  positivism  is  to  describe  actual 
experience  and  hve  as  experience  teaches.  Man  can  ex- 
plain nothing. 

For  further  study  read: 

Berkeley,  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  Introduction 
and  sections  85-134; 

Hume,  Enquiry  Concerning  Human  Understanding. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Mill,  J.  S.,  Comte  and  His  Positivism; 

Pearson,  K.,  Grammar  of  Science; 

Stallo,  J.  B.,  Concepts  and  Theories  of  Modern  Physics, 
1881; 

Nunn,  T.  P.,  Aims  and  Achievements  of  Scientific  Method; 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  293-433. 

7.  Objective  idealism. — With  the  successors  of  Kant, 
the  nineteenth  century  ideaUsts,  the  problem  of  knowl- 
edge was  solved  in  a  radically  different  way.  Idealism, 
rejecting  any  other  than  the  world  of  experience,  faced 
quite  a  different  problem  from  that  faced  by  Locke  and 
Hume.  The  question  was  no  longer,  how  can  we  tran- 
scend experience  and  know  an  extra-mental  world?  Nor 
was  it  longer,  how  are  substances  and  forces  to  be  revealed 
to  minds  that  sense  only  qualities?  Rather  it  was  the 
problem  of  the  mind's  own  inherent  ways  of  organizing 
man's  sensory  experiences  into  the  complex  world  that 
increasing  maturity  in  knowledge  brings  into  existence  as 
a  matter  of  fact.  For  example,  the  experiences  of  the 
child  are  not  integrated  to  any  great  extent  and  the  child 
can  hardly  be  said  to  have  a  world  at  all.  As  the  child 
grows  in  experience  it  grows  also  in  mental  organization 
and  thus  a  genuine  cosmos  arises  as  the  object  of  its 
knowledge.    With  further  maturity  and  especially  with 


354      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  maturity  which  we  call  man's  progress  in  science, 
generation  after  generation,  the  world  of  experience  be- 
comes richer  and  richer  in  content  and  more  and  more 
organized  into  a  coherent  system.  Now  what  the  word, 
reality  means,  is  not  some  external  object  but  the  ideal 
goal  of  this  evolution  of  human  experience,  not  some  worl^ 
apart  trom  the  mmd  but  the  developiiiFmind  itself  reach- 
ing the  limit  of  its  growth  in  the  ideal  history  of  the  hvtman 
spirit. 

If  we  adopt  this  point  of  view  phenomenalism  itself  has 
been  escaped  and  the  problems  raised  by  Hume  are  easily 
solved.  This  idealism  is  genuinely  objective,  because  there 
are  no  objects  except  those  of  experience  and  because  the 
experience  of  which  we  are  speaking  is  not  merely  the 
experience  of  the  individual  man  or  even  the  experience  of 
the  human  race  but  universal  experience  of  which  the 
experience  of  the  individual  and  the  race  are  but  important 
historical  and  finite  stages.  Thus  the  experience  of  which 
the  objective  ideahst  speaks  is  beyond  history  and  man, 
and  is  superpersonal.  As  such  it  escapes  with  difficulty 
from  being  a  merely  mystical  entity,  from  being  a  symbolic 
formula  such  as  the  limit  of  a  mathematical  series,  or  from 
existing  merely  in  the  sense  mathematical  entities  can 
rightly  be  said  to  exist.  However,  this  limit  of  evolving 
experiences  is  reality,  the  absolute,  or  the  absolute  mind 
of  the  objective  idealist.  As  a  theory  of  knowledge  it 
solves  all  the  older  problems  by  making  everything  im- 
manent in  the  growing  mind  and  reducing  the  problem  of 
knowledge  to  that  of  discovering  the  inherent  (or,  what 
certainly  looks  Hke,  the  inborn  or  instinctive)  embryonic 
course  of  intellectual  development  from  the  child  to  the 
ideal  limit  of  intellectual  growth.  In  short,  objective 
ideahsm  reduced  the  Cartesian  problem  of  knowledge  to  a 
problem  of  mental  growth. 

Objective  idealism  had  its  beginnings  in  the  Critique 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    355 

of  Pure  Reason  ^  of  Kant  and  reached  virtually  its  final  ex- 
position in  the  Logic  and  other  writings  of  Hegel  (^.1810). 
Since  Hegel's  time  it  has  become  an  important  movement 
in  Great  Britain  and  America.  Here  again,  the  historian 
cannot  fail  to  mark  the  complete  divorce  between  science 
and  this  lonely  and  largely  academic  doctrine.  Perhaps 
the  future  may  bring  them  together  but  at  present  this 
movement,  large  and  important  as  it  no  doubt  is,  seems  an 
eddy  rather  than  the  main  current  of  European  philos- 
ophical thought.  True  a  possible  exception  must  be  made 
in  this  statement  because  of  the  influence  of  Hegel  and  his 
school  upon  historical  study  in  the  nineteenth  century ;  but 
this  influence  seems  to  have  been  outgrown  and  this  much 
to  the  relief  of  historical  science.  In  contrast  with  positiv- 
ism idealism  seems  to  have  been  less  able  to  win  the  in- 
tellectual classes  and  to  have  played  small  part  in  further- 
ing man's  scientific  enterprise.  Rather,  it  has  had  its 
influence  through  the  romantic  movement  of  which  it  was 
a  part  and  to  this  we  shall  return  in  a  later  chapter. 

For  further  study  read: 

Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  529-622; 

Paulsen,  Im.  Kant,  His  Life  and  Doctrine; 

Caird,  E.,  The  Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant,  espec.  chap- 
ter I; 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  II,  29-109; 

Royce,  J.,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  101-471; 

Watson,  Selections  from  Kant; 

Fichte,  Vocation  of  Man; 

Calkins,  M.  W.,  Persistent  Problems  of  Philosophy. 
For  more  extensive  studij  read: 

Haldane,  R.  B.,  Pathway  to  Reality,  1906; 

Miinsterberg,  H.,  The  Eternal  Values,  1909; 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  1-119; 

Caird,  J.,  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion. 

1  Published  in  1781. 


356      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

8.  The  influence  of  phenomenalism  and  positivism 
upon  the  intellectual  life  of  the  past  two  centuries. — 

Agnostic  phenomenaKsm  and  positivism  have  favored 
both  the  conservative  and  the  radical  religious  thinkers. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  has  been  argued  that  if  man  is  Umited 
in  his  knowledge  to  what  he  experiences,  a  knowledge  of 
God  and  of  a  supersensible  world-order  is  impossible,  is 
indeed  an  idle  speculation.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been 
argued  that  the  older  rationalism  and  its  atheism  have 
become  bankrupt  and  that  now  there  is  room  in  the 
universe  for  God,  the  divine  order  and  revelation.  If  the 
real,  or  supersensible  world  transcends  science,  science 
certainly  can  not  contradict  the  hypotheses  of  religion  re- 
garding this  supersensible  world.  After  all,  this  world 
may  be  what  religion  claims  it  to  be,  and  as  science  has 
admitted  her  inability  to  decide,  man's  heart  and  con- 
science are  left  free  to  judge.  In  other  words,  if  man's 
heart  and  conscience  demand  such  a  world  and  if  science 
must  remain  neutral,  the  victory  is  won  and  man  can 
again  beheve  in  God,  freedom,  and  immortaUty,  or  in 
divine  revelation.  True,  he  cannot  give  a  rationalistic 
proof  of  this  belief  but  he  can  accept  the  verdict  of  his 
heart  and  conscience  as  final  practical  postulates.  In  this 
way  the  downfall  of  rationalism  led  to  man's  heart  and 
conscience  arising  supreme  in  the  directing  of  life  and 
faith.^ 

In  the  realm  of  science  the  field  especially  and  immedi- 
ately influenced  by  phenomenalism  and  positivism  was 
that  of  psychology  and  social  and  moral  science.  Phenom- 
enaKsm and   positivism   were   powerful   factors   in   the 

^  This  position  is  evidently  on  the  verge  of  romanticism.  Its  two 
most  prominent  representatives  in  the  eighteenth  century  were 
Berkeley  and  Kant.  Of  its  many  prominent  advocates  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  Ritschl  in  Germany  and  Mansel  in  England  have 
been  especially  influential  among  theologians. 


PHENOMENALISM,  POSITIVISM,  AND  IDEALISM    357 

tendencies  I  have  described  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
namely,  sensationism  and  associationism.  If  mental  life  is 
ultimate,  the  science  of  mental  life  can  hardly  go  beyond 
mental  analysis  and  description.  Physiological  research 
and  explanation  can  hardly  contribute  to  a  science  that 
stands  logically  prior  to  all  other  sciences  and  whose  very 
problems  are  the  origin  and  nature  of  man's  world  and 
all  its  contents.  Thus  psychology  drifted  into  the  dreary 
and  elaborate  introspective  study  of  mental  states  and 
their  analysis  and  integration,  and  remained  such  a  study 
until  the  doctrine  of  evolution  began  to  transform  psychol- 
ogy again  into  a  biological  science.^ 

In  conclusion,  whatever  may  have  been  the  specific 
forms  taken  by  subjectivism,  subjectivism  in  general  has 
tended  during  the  past  two  hundred  years  to  weaken  con- 
fidence in  the  reahty  of  the  world,  in  the  enterprises  of 
man's  life  and  in  the  principles  of  morality  and  religion. 
The  world  has  come  to  seem  to  many  man-made,  or  mind- 
made  rather  than  real.  Certainly  in  its  extreme  forms 
subjectivism  has  weakened  the  sense  of  the  reality  of 
things  to  a  degree  that  substitutes  hypnotism  for  science 
or  skill.  It  has  emphasized  belief  rather  than  reality  so  that 
some  men  have  come  to  care  more  about  bemg  conMeiiL 
than  about  being  right.  Again,  it  has  weakened  the  sense 
of  duty  and  the  authority  of  the  law,  by  regarding  man's 
mind  as  the  maker  and  remaker  of  both.  The  ultimate 
criterion  of  reality  and  of  the  true,  the  good,  and  the 
beautiful  have  become  for  many  thoughtful  men  merely 
human  satisfaction.  Among  the  highly  intellectual  classes 
subjectivism  has  certainly  tended  to  make  men  approach 
the  solution  of  problem  after  problem  from  psychological 

^  The  influence  of  phenomenalism  and  positivism  upon  moral  and 
social  science  was  likewise  to  further  some  of  the  tendencies  already 
described.  In  particular,  they  favored  the  growing  utilitariamsm 
especially  of  the  English  poUtical  and  moral  theorists. 


358      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

(and  even  biological)  standpoints  when  earlier  thinkers 
would  have  chosen  other  points  of  departure.  In  this  way 
it  has  tended  to  make  art,  morality,  religion,  political 
theory,  law,  logic  and  in  general  philosophy  mere  branches 
of  psychology  or  even  of  biology.  Indeed,  the  very  basis 
of  the  universe  has  been  conceived  by  subjectivism  in 
terms  of  the  biological  adaptation  of  man  to  his  environ- 
ment or  in  terms  of  human  instincts  and  their  satisfaction. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION 

1.  Introductory. — The  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  witnessed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  rise  of  modern 
intellectualism  and  its  subordinate  philosophical  move- 
ments, mechanistic  naturalism,  rationalism,  phenomenal- 
ism, positivism,  and  idealism.  The  nineteenth  century  in 
turn  witnessed  the  rise  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  of 
the  romantic  reaction  against  intellectualism.  On  the 
one  hand,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  extended  the  older 
intellectualism  by  adding  to  it  new  philosophical  interests, 
problems  and  hypotheses  of  highest  importance.  On  the 
other  hand,  romanticism  liberated  the  life  of  feeling  and 
emotion  suppressed  during  the  age  of  reason.  Let  us 
consider  first  the  rise  of  the  former  doctrine,  the  theory  of 
evolution. 

The  rapidly  growing  knowledge  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury forced  upon  the  attention  of  scientists  more  and  more 
imperatively  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  man's  world,  that 
is  the  origin  of  the  solar  system,  the  origin  of  the  earth  and 
her  present  surface,  the  origin  of  life  and  its  innumerable 
forms,  the  origin  of  man,  of  his  mind  and  of  his  civilization. 
Thus  from  the  late  eighteenth  century  to  our  own  time  the 
following  questions  commenced  one  after  the  other  to 
concern  the  intellectual  world.  How  did  the  solar  and 
sidereal  systems  arise?  How  did  the  crust  of  the  earth 
reach  its  present  structure  and  character?  Whence  arose 
the  species  of  animals  and  plants?  What  was  the  origin  of 
man  and  what  has  been  the  origin  of  his  customs,  laws, 

359 


360      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

institutions,  arts  and  beliefs?  If  naturalism  was  to  be  a 
consistent  and  adequate  philosophical  conception  of  the 
world,  it  had  to  include  an  account  of  the  rise  of  all  these 
things  and  it  had  to  explain  this  rise  by  naturalistic  prem- 
ises. Still  here  as  elsewhere  thought  moved  slowly  and  by 
stages.  Only  slowly  could  the  new  naturalism  expand  into 
fields  still  occupied  by  traditional  and  prescientific  belief 
and  only  gradually  could  it  recognize  the  presence  of  the 
many  problems  of  origin  and  development  implicit  in  its 
very  earliest  subjects  of  research. 

The  first  definite  attempt  to  explain  the  origin  of  any  of 
these  entities  by  appeahng  to  the  results  of  genuinely 
scientific  research  was,  as  we  should  expect,  in  the  most 
advanced  science  of  the  day,  namely,  in  gravitational 
astronomy.  Kant  and  Laplace  share  the  honor  of  offering 
to  the  world  the  nebular  hypothesis,  a  distinctly  nat- 
uralistic effort  to  explain  in  the  terms  of  mechanics  instead 
of  the  terms  of  supernaturalism  the  origin  of  our  solar 
system.^ 

At  the  same  time  the  increasing  knowledge  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  of  its  strata,  and  of  the  fossils  contained 
in  them  were  forcing  geologists  to  attend  to  the  problem  of 
the  historical  origin  of  the  earth's  present  surface  and  of  the 
animal  and  plant  life  it  supports.  The  same  problem 
forced  itself  upon  the  attention  also  of  zoologists  and 
botanists.  In  short,  in  the  late  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  centuries  the  problem  had  become  pressing 
because  of  the  vast  store  of  geological  and  biological  in- 
formation that  could  not  be  adequately  systematized  and 
explained  by  the  prescientific  and  traditional  theories  of 
creation. 

Finally,  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  an  increasing 

1  It  is  interesting  to  notice,  however,  that  this  same  thinker  Kant 
despaired  of  science  ever  being  able  to  account  naturalistically  for 
the  rise  of  plant  and  animal  life. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION  361 

interest  developed  in  all  that  we  call  the  history  of  man. 
The  older  intellectualism  had  turned  men  to  the  study  and 
imitation  of  classical  art  and  literature;  but  now  the  dawn- 
ing romanticism  turned  men  to  the  study  of  the  middle 
ages,  and  of  the  folklore  and  folk  customs  of  northern 
Europe.  A  far  better  acquaintance  with  the  eastern 
peoples,  their  customs  and  arts,  their  literature  and 
religion,  and  especially  with  the  civilization  of  India  was 
also  awakening  an  interest  in  the  origin  and  development 
of  language,  literature,  art,  and  religion.  Finally,  pohtical 
and  social  history  and  science  were  becoming  mere  evolu- 
tionary in  the  problems  they  raised  and  in  the  subject- 
matter  they  studied.  Thus,  from  astronomy  to  the 
sciences  of  society  and  civilization  a  growing  interest 
developed  in  the  problems  of  genesis  and  origin. 

For  further  study  read: 

Royce,  Spirit  of  Modem  Philosophy,  273-304; 
Merz,  J.  T.,  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  Vol.  II,  chapter  IX. 

2.  Geological  and  biological  evolution. — Of  these 
fields  of  research  that  of  geology  and  biology  was  stra- 
tegically the  most  important,  for  here  the  rise  of  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution  was  to  modify  radically  the  philosophical 
thought  of  Europe  and  America.  The  strategical  impor- 
tance of  this  field  is  easily  explained  if  we  recall  that  it 
included  most  of  what  both  prescientific  and  even  intel- 
lectual men  have  in  mind  when  they  speak  of  creation; 
that  is,  it  included  the  development  of  the  earth  as  the 
habitat  of  man,  beast  and  plant,  the  development  of  life 
upon  the  earth  and  finally  the  origin  and  prehistory  of 
man  himself.  Thus  it  included  the  great  arena  in  which 
reUgion  in  all  the  ages  has  found  especially  the  combat 
between  the  forces  of  good  and  evil  and  the  consummation 
of  the  divine  drama.    Finally,  the  field  of  geological  and 


362      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

biological  evolution  included  the  most  conservative  sur- 
vivals of  prescientific  belief,  and  therefore  the  field  into 
which  the  naturalism  of  the  preceding  two  centuries  had 
hardly  penetrated.  Here,  in  other  words,  the  great  body 
of  European  thought  and  belief  still  remained  prescientific. 

The  rise  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in  geology  and  biol- 
ogy is  associated  pre-eminently  with  the  names  of  Lyell  and 
Darwin,  though  these  thinkers  were  of  course  but  leaders 
in  a  movement  older  than  they  and  in  a  movement  steadily 
advancing  in  the  direction  in  which  they  were  to  hasten 
its  progress.  However,  the  vast  influence  of  the  two  books, 
Lyell's  Principles  of  Geology  (1830-33)  and  Darwin's  Origin 
of  Species  (1859)  is  more  easily  underestimated  than  over- 
estimated; for  they  were  philosophically  the  most  impor- 
tant books  written  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Before 
their  years  of  pubUcation  few  men  were  evolutionists  and 
fewer  men  were  evolutionists  in  many  fields;  whereas  by 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  entire  intellectual 
world  had  become  evolutionistic,  and  evolutionistic  not 
merely  in  geology  and  biology  but  in  every  field  of  his- 
torical research  and  in  every  field  of  deliberative  effort  to 
advance  civilization.  Indeed,  to  view  all  things  from  an 
evolutionistic  standpoint  has  become  virtually  an  element 
of  commonsense. 

But  what  constituted  the  philosophical  advance  made 
by  these  great  books?  First,  they  extended  naturalism  to 
fields  that  up  to  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  these  books 
were  the  most  difficult  for  man  to  conceive  in  naturalistic 
terms  and  that  therefore  man  had  continued  to  conceive 
in  supernaturalistic  terms.  Now  "natural "  means  capable 
of  scientific  explanation  and  so  the  preceding  statement 
may  be  re-expressed  thus:  these  books  enlarged  the  field 
of  scientific  explanation  to  include  the  origin  of  the  world 
which  forms  man's  immediate  habitat  and  the  origin  of 
man  and  his  civiUzation.    Thus  they  taught  men  to  think 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION  363 

of  themselves,  body,  life  and  mind  and  of  their  civilization 
and  of  all  that  it  includes  as  genuinely  natural,  natural  in 
origin,  natural  in  development  and  natural  in  destiny. 
They  taught  men  that  man's  world  is  as  truly  a  part  of 
nature  as  is  the  system  of  mechanical  forces  exemplified 
in  the  solar  system.  Second,  they  taught  men  that  the 
processes  now  actually  observable  in  nature  can  account 
for  origins  which  previously  seemed  to  require  radically 
different  processes,  if  not  even  supernatural  processes. 
The  same  erosion  now  observable  in  nature,  if  given  time, 
can  level  mountains  from  whose  debris  in  turn  vast  de- 
posits can  be  built.  The  very  pressures  now  observable 
can  create  mountains  and  make  faults  and  earthquakes. 
The  variations  in  species  actually  observable  and  the 
observable  survival  of  the  fittest  enabling  these  fittest  to 
procreate  the  next  generation  can  account  for  the  origin  of 
new  species  from  the  old,  can  account  for  the  dying  out  of 
types  of  animal  and  plant  and  can  account  for  the  innu- 
merable variety  of  types  to  which  an  earlier  type  can  ulti- 
mately give  rise.  Third,  these  books  opened  the  eyes  of 
men  to  the  complete  genetic  continuity  in  nature.  This 
continuity  had  been  long  taught  in  the  abstract  by  nat- 
uralistic thinkers  but  here  it  was  given  in  the  concrete  and 
exemplified  where  least  expected.  Now  genetic  continuity 
became  explicitly  the  object  of  search  in  every  science 
which  dealt  with  the  origin  and  development  of  anything 
whatsoever,  be  it  a  mountain  or  a  part  of  a  mountain,  be 
it  a  genus  or  a  specific  animal's  body  or  a  part  of  his  body, 
be  it  a  language  or  a  word  in  a  language,  be  it  a  civilization 
or  a  custom  within  a  civilization,  be  it  a  religion  or  a 
specific  rite  or  belief  in  that  religion,  be  it  a  government  or 
a  specific  institution  within  that  government,  the  common 
law  or  a  specific  decision  in  the  history  of  the  law,  architec- 
ture or  a  specific  building,  the  drama  or  a  play  of  Shake- 
speare.    All  now  were  studied  with  the  expectation  of 


364      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

finding  a  genetic  continuity  between  what  is  and  what  has 
been. 

Of  course,  Lyell  and  Darwin  left  to  the  next  generation 
of  scientists  vastly  more  problems  than  they  themselves 
solved,  and  they  left  solutions  which  may  one  and  all  in 
the  long  run  prove  erroneous;  but  what  they  did  leave 
settled  was  the  progress  of  naturalism.  Naturalism  may 
or  may  not  be  a  sound  philosophy,  that  is  a  matter  which 
history  can  decide  but  not  the  historian.  Our  point  is 
solely  that  from  these  days  naturalism  thoroughly  under- 
stood her  own  ambition,  saw  what  might  be  expected  of 
her  and  viewed  the  future  with  confidence.  Moreover, 
naturalism  was  now  in  a  position  really  to  win  the  intel- 
lectual world  and  to  convince  intellectual  men  that  the 
world  about  them  and  they  themselves  are  genuinely  the 
proper  objects  of  scientific  explanation. 

3.  The  doctrine  of  natural  selection. — To  this  account 
of  the  bearing  of  geological  and  biological  evolution  upon 
the  more  general  doctrine  of  naturalism  we  must  add  a 
brief  statement  of  Darwin's  doctrine  of  natural  selection; 
for  it  has  played  not  merely  the  part  of  a  special  biological 
hypothesis  but  also  the  part  of  a  general,  or  philosophical 
hypothesis.  The  biological  doctrine  of  natural  selection 
may  be  stated  thus :  To  reach  maturity  and  to  be  able  to 
leave  offspring  any  living  creature  must  meet  those  condi- 
tions of  its  environment  which  not  to  meet  would  mean  its 
death.  It  must  secure  the  indispensable  food,  it  must 
escape  its  enemies  and  it  must  protect  itself  against  all 
other  death-causing  agents,  living  or  lifeless.  Now  no 
such  perfect  adjustment  between  organisms  and  their 
environment  obtains  that  the  aforementioned  conditions 
cease  to  be  a  serious  matter;  rather  all  species  have  a  high 
death  rate  before  maturity  and  in  most  species  this  death 
rate  is  enormous.  Hence  in  most  species  the  individual 
that  survives  long  enough  to  leave  offspring  is  highly 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION  365 

exceptional.  As  special  evidence  of  this  fact  consider  that 
all  species  tend  to  reproduce  their  kind  far  beyond  the 
available  food  supply  and  even  far  beyond  the  available 
area  of  the  habitat.  Consider,  for  example,  the  rate  of 
reproduction  in  such  types  as  the  insects,  the  fish,  or  the 
bacteria  or  the  fruit  trees  in  which  in  a  few  generations  the 
mathematically  possible  offspring  from  one  seed,  spore  or 
ovum  would  be  millions  in  number.  Consider  in  contrast 
the  fact  that  the  actual  number  of  plants  or  animals  in 
any  habitat  is  usually  all  but  constant.  These  two  facts 
can  be  harmonized  only  by  the  hypothesis  that  very  few 
ova  or  seeds  develop  into  fully  mature  creatures.  The 
number  perishing  between  the  first  stage  of  life  and  the 
mature  stage  must  be  enormous.  That  is  to  say,  the 
conditions  of  the  environment,  or  nature,  selects  out  of 
any  generation  the  few  that  are  to  survive  and  leave  off- 
spring. But  which  are  thus  selected?  The  correct  reply 
is  the  truism:  Those  best  adjusted  to  the  environment, 
those  most  fitted  to  the  actual  conditions,  however  acci- 
dental these  conditions  may  be.  If  then  any  exceptional 
trait  is  possessed  by  part  of  any  species,  a  mutation,  for 
example,  that  gives  the  individuals  possessing  it  an  im- 
portant handicap  fitting  them  better  than  their  fellows  to 
the  specific  conditions  of  the  environment;  then  the 
chances  are  highly  in  favor  of  the  few  who  do  survive, 
including  some  of  these  with  the  valuable  new  trait. 
Hence,  finally,  wherever  a  valuable  trait  does  arise,  other 
things  being  equal,  it  survives  to  the  next  generation ;  and 
in  time  only  those  possessing  this  trait  do  survive.  In 
short,  the  old  species  has  disappeared  and  a  new  variety 
has  taken  its  place. 

Whether  or  not  this  doctrine  of  natural  selection  can 
explain  all  that  the  biologists  of  Darwin's  generation 
thought  it  could,  is  in  no  way  my  question.  What  I  wish 
to  point  out  is  the  fact  that  this  doctrine  became  rapidly 


366      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

generalized  and  then  widely  used  in  the  sciences.  Gen- 
eralized the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  asserts:  Of  the 
innumerable  entities  which  come  into  existence  some  are 
so  favorably  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  their  further 
survival  that  they  persist  and  tend  to  become  typical; 
whereas  others  not  favorably  adapted  perish  and  fail  to 
become  typical.  Now  we  have  in  the  doctrine  of  natural 
selection  thus  generalized  a  principle  that  applies  to  in- 
numerable entities  which  form  part  of  human  history. 
For  example,  it  applies  to  all  customs  and  beliefs,  to  tools 
and  machines,  to  words  and  idioms,  to  architecture  and 
art,  to  types  of  literature  and  literary  style,  to  laws  and 
institutions,  to  scientific  theories  and  principles,  to  re- 
ligious rites  and  dogmas,  to  methods  of  commerce,  indus- 
try and  banking,  to  forms  of  dress  and  adornment,  to 
methods  of  education  and  to  professional  callings  and  to 
the  innumerable  other  arts,  customs  and  institutions  that 
constitute  the  Ufe  and  the  culture  of  a  people.  Similarly 
it  applies  to  the  development  of  habit  in  the  individual 
mind.  The  habits  of  any  adult  are  the  resultant  of  a 
natural  selection  taking  place  from  childhood.  On  the 
one  hand,  this  process  eliminates  response  after  response 
that  does  not  lead  to  satisfaction  or  does  lead  to  annoy- 
ance; and  on  the  other  hand,  it  allows  to  survive  as  habits 
those  responses  that  are  satisfying.  For  example,  that 
you  and  I  speak  English  and  not  some  jungle  dialect  is 
due  to  such  a  natural  selection,  that  we  have  the  etiquette 
and  morals  of  civilized  whites  and  not  of  wild  people  is 
again  due  to  this  factor,  and  finally,  that  we  think  more  or 
less  logically  and  not  altogether  hysterically  or  childishly 
is  likewise  the  result  of  this  same  process  of  selection. 
Moreover,  not  only  can  the  survival  of  entities  that  are 
peculiarly  human  or  biological  be  thought  of  in  terms  of 
natural  selection,  but  also  the  survival  of  solar  systems  and 
chemical  atoms  and  chemical  molecules  and  compounds. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION  367 

In  short,  any  structure,  chemical  or  physical,  is  an  equilib- 
rium of  forces  depending  upon  environmental  conditions 
and  its  adaptation  to  those  conditions  for  its  survival. 
However,  it  is  chiefly  in  the  biological,  the  psychological 
and  the  social,  the  pohtical,  the  economic,  the  moral  and, 
in  general,  all  historical  sciences  that  the  doctrine  of 
selection  has  become  an  important  philosophical  principle. 

For  further  study  read: 

Judd,  J.  W.,  The  Coming  of  Evolution,  1910; 

Thomson  and  Geddes,  Evolution   (Home  University  Li- 
brary) ; 

Romanes,  G.  J.,  Darwin  and  after  Darwin,  1901,  Vol.  I; 

Merz,  J.  T.,  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  Vol.  II,  chapter  IX. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Osborn,  H.  F.,  From  the  Greeks  to  Darwin; 

Darwin,  Origin  of  Species. 

4.  Evolution  as  a  part  of  the  philosophy  of  the  intellec- 
tual world. — The  winning  of  the  intellectual  world  to 
evolution  was  not  without  a  fierce  struggle  comparable  to 
the  struggle  that  centered  about  Galilei.  But  to-day  this 
struggle  is  happily  over.  Evolution  is  an  integral  part  of 
our  habits  of  thought  almost  as  much  as  are  the  multiplica- 
tion tables;  for  we  are  literally  evolutionists  in  every 
branch  of  historical  study  and  are  so  as  a  matter  of  course. 
The  sciences  of  geology,  biology,  psychology,  sociology, 
anthropology,  philology,  political  history,  the  history  of 
art,  of  literature,  of  religion,  of  law  and  social  institutions 
are  one  and  all  evolutionistic  and  have  become  such  during 
the  fifty  or  sixty  years  since  the  publication  of  the  Origin  oj 
Species. 

For  further  study  read: 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  434-485. 


368      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Spencer,  H.,  First  Principles; 
Fifty  Years  of  Darwinism,  1909. 

5.  The  influence  of  evolution  upon  the  general  trend 
of  present  philosophic  thought. — With  the  years  imme- 
diately succeeding  the  pubHcation  of  the  Origin  of  Species 
we  enter  the  period  reserved  for  a  later  chapter  of  this 
book;  however,  let  us  notice  here  one  highly  general 
philosophical  influence  of  Darwin. 

Modern  experimentalism  really  began,  as  we  have  seen, 
with  Galilei;  but  experimentalism  made  its  way  only 
slowly  from  field  to  field  and  did  not  reach  the  goal  of  being 
a  general  philosophy  until  our  own  time.  Here  Darwin  has 
certainly  helped  more  than  any  other  man.  Directly  or 
indirectly  he  has  taught  the  succeeding  generations  that 
the  entire  intellectual  enterprise  of  man  is  itself  an  evolving 
and  therefore  tentative  or  an  experimental  undertaking. 
Rationahsm  with  its  fixed  axioms  and  its  optimism  re- 
garding man's  ability  to  reach  quickly  the  goal  of  any 
science  or  the  final  solution  of  any  problem  seems  to  most 
intellectual  men  of  to-day  absurdly  presumptuous.  We 
feel  our  way  onward  distrustful  of  utopianism  or  finality 
in  any  form  or  guise,  be  it  final  scientific  hypotheses  or 
final  moral  codes  or  final  political  theories  or  final  ideals  of 
art  or  literature  or  final  theologies.  In  short,  the  philos- 
ophy of  our  intellectual  life  and  of  our  moral  and  practical 
life  is  filled  with  the  spirit  of  trial  and  error,  of  struggle  for 
existence,  and  of  survival  of  the  fittest,  that  is,  of  evolution 
by  natural  selection. 

For  further  study  read: 

Dewey,  J.,  The  Influence  of  Darwin  upon  Philosophy,  1910, 
Chapter  I. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

ROMANTICISM 

1.  Introductory. — Thus  far  in  the  history  of  modern 
philosophy  we  have  studied  the  several  tendencies  within 
the  intellectualistic  movement.  We  have  now  to  study  the 
anti-intelleetualistic,  or  romantic  movement  which  arose 
in  reaction  against  intellectualism. 

Not  only  did  the  rise  of  modern  science  fail  to  eliminate  a 
large  part  of  prescientific  belief  and  custom  but  it  failed 
also  to  suppress  completely  medieval  religion,  emo- 
tion and  art.  True,  these  latter  remained  somewhat  in 
the  background  during  two  or  more  centuries,  while  the 
new  and  powerful  tendencies  in  European  thought  played 
their  part.  As  we  have  seen,  in  the  seventeenth  and  eight- 
eenth centuries  classicism  in  art  and  literature,  naturalism 
in  science,  and  rationalism  in  religion  were  prominent  in 
the  intellectual  life  of  Europe;  but  the  eighteenth  century 
witnessed  also  a  revival  of  the  spirit  of  the  medieval  north- 
ern peoples.  This  change  appeared  first  in  the  revival  of 
emotional  religion,  in  the  pietist  movement  in  Germany 
and  the  methodist  movement  in  England.  These  religious 
movements  were  reactions  against  the  cold  rationalism  and 
formalism  of  the  older  protestant  churches;  and  char- 
acteristically they  demanded  of  men  a  deep  emotional 
religious  experience  and  appealed  not  to  man's  intellect 
but  to  his  heart  and  religious  intuition ;  and  characteristic- 
ally, they  succeeded  first  among  the  folk  rather  than 
among  the  intellectual  classes.  Late  in  the  eighteenth 
century  and  early  in  the  nineteenth  romanticism  began  to 

369 


370      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

appear  also  in  literature  and  in  the  revival  of  interest  in 
the  folk  customs,  ballads  and  legends.  Again,  it  appeared 
in  the  revival  of  interest  in  the  middle  ages  and  in  Catholi- 
cism. Finally,  it  appeared  in  a  new  interest  in  the  Orient, 
her  religion,  her  thought,  her  languages  and  literature.^ 

2.  Romanticism  as  a  philosophical  movement:  (a) 
Rousseau. — In  the  French  writer  Rousseau  romanticism 
began  to  appear  as  an  explicit  philosophical  movement, 
which  fact  together  with  Rousseau's  widespread  and 
powerful  influence  upon  European  thought  makes  him 
one  of  the  most  important  of  modern  thinkers.  Briefly 
stated,  the  important  philosophical  principle  maintained 
by  Rousseau  was:  "Morality  and  religion  are  not  matters 
of  reasoned  thinking,  but  of  natural  feeling.  Man's  worth 
depends  not  on  his  intelligence,  but  on  his  moral  nature, 
which  consists  essentially  of  feeling;  the  good  will  alone  has 
absolute  value."  That  is  to  say,  the  sentiments  are  the 
important  element  in  our  mental  life,  and  it  is  not  through 
the  development  of  intelhgence  that  man  becomes  per- 
fect but  through  the  development  of  feeling;  for  the  ideal 
man  is  he  that  is  filled  with  sympathy  for  his  fellows  and  is 
"inspired  by  religious  feeling,  gratitude,  and  reverence."  ^ 

(b)  Kant,  Fichte  and  their  successors. — Influenced  by 
Rousseau,  Kant  and  Fichte  expressed  the  same  principle. 

^  Some  familiar  nineteenth  century  examples  of  the  new  movement 
are  the  following: — the  interest  that  led  the  brothers  Grimm  to  col- 
lect the  fairy  tales  of  the  German  peasantry;  the  romances  of  Walter 
Scott;  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge  and  Keats;  the  Oxford 
movement  in  the  Church  of  England  toward  medieval  cathohcism 
under  the  leadership  of  the  great  EngUsh  thinker  and  writer  John 
Henry  Newman  and  his  associates;  the  revival  of  gothic  architecture 
in  England  and  America  reacting  against  the  classical  architecture  of 
the  eighteenth  century;  and  finally,  especially  in  Germany,  new 
interest  in  the  study  of  the  historical  development  of  language  and 
in  general  the  rapidly  rising  interest  in  historical  research  of  every 
kind. 

2  Quoted  from  Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  389. 


ROMANTICISM  371 

In  Kant's  words: — "Nothing  in  the  whole  world,  or  even 
outside  of  the  world,  can  possibly  be  regarded  as  good 
without  limitation  except  a  good  will.  No  doubt  it  is  a 
good  and  desirable  thing  to  have  intelligence,  sagacity, 
judgment,  and  other  intellectual  gifts,  by  whatever  name 
they  may  be  called ;  it  is  also  good  and  desirable  in  many 
respects  to  possess  by  nature  such  quahties  as  courage, 
resolution,  and  perseverance;  but  all  these  gifts  of  nature 
may  be  in  the  highest  degree  pernicious  and  hurtful,  if 
the  will  which  directs  them  or  what  is  called  the  character, 
is  not  itself  good.  The  same  thing  applies  to  gifts  of  for- 
tune. Power,  wealth,  honor,  even  good  health,  and  that 
general  well-being  and  contentment  with  one's  lot  which 
we  call  happiness,  give  rise  to  pride  and  not  infrequently  to 
insolence,  if  a  man's  will  is  not  good ;  nor  can  a  reflective 
and  impartial  spectator  ever  look  with  satisfaction  upon 
the  unbroken  prosperity  of  a  man  who  is  destitute  of  the 
ornament  of  a  pure  and  good  will.  A  good  will  would 
therefore  seem  to  be  the  indispensable  condition  without 
which  no  one  is  even  worthy  to  be  happy. 

"A  man's  will  is  good,  not  because  the  consequences 
which  flow  from  it  are  good,  nor  because  it  is  capable  of 
attaining  the  end  which  it  seeks,  but  it  is  good  in  itself,  or 
because  it  wills  the  good.  By  a  good  will  is  not  meant  mere 
well-wishing;  it  consists  in  a  resolute  employment  of  all 
the  means  within  one's  reach,  and  its  intrinsic  value  is  in 
no  way  increased  by  success  or  lessened  by  failure."  ^ 

With  Kant  and  Rousseau  Fichte  asserted  the  primacj'-  of 
the  will,  and  adopting  an  outright  idealism  he  found  in  the 
will  strugghng  for  the  good  the  very  central  fact  of  the 
universe.  The  universe  is  an  eternal  struggle  for  right- 
eousness and  by  so  viewing  it  man  can  comprehend  the 
very  essence  of  all  things. 

Among  the  successors  of  Kant  and  Fichte  in  the  move- 
1  Watson,  Selections  from  Kant,  pp.  225  f . 


372      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ment  called  German  idealism  the  greatest  romanticist 
was  Schopenhauer.  Schopenhauer  taught  that  the  will, 
or  the  instinctive  and  impulsive  nature  exhibited  in  our 
human  minds  reveals  the  very  essence  of  the  universe 
and  of  all  its  processes  and  contents.  From  the  inanimate 
up  through  plant  and  animal  to  man  we  behold  every- 
where the  blind  struggle  to  exist  and  to  take  on  character- 
istic forms.  In  the  vastly  greater  part  of  nature  this 
will  is  blind,  but  in  man  it  becomes  self-conscious.  Thus 
every  event,  or  transformation  in  nature,  man  or  society, 
is  interpreted  as  the  striving  of  the  will.  It  may  be  a 
magnetized  needle  pointing  north,  or  a  tree  sending  its 
roots  deeper  into  the  soil,  the  beast  of  prey  seeking  his 
game,  man  struggling  for  fame,  or  society  warring  for 
empire,  one  and  all  are  but  the  acts  of  the  primordial  will, 
the  very  stuff  of  which  the  universe  is  made. 

This  will  to  live  and  to  transform  is  capable  of  both  an 
optimistic  and  pessimistic  interpretation.  Kant  and 
Fichte  had  given  the  optimistic  interpretation;  whereas 
Schopenhauer  is  the  famous  apostle  of  the  pessimistic 
interpretation: — "The  will  to  be,  the  will  to  live,  is  the 
cause  of  all  struggle,  sorrow,  and  evil  in  the  world."  It 
is  the  cause  of  the  ceaseless  competition  for  life  between 
one  thing  and  another.  It  is  the  cause  that  makes  life 
selfish.  "The  life  of  most  men  is  but  a  continuous  struggle 
for  existence, — a  struggle  which  they  are  bound  to  lose 
at  last.  .  .  .  Death  must  conquer  after  all."  In  such  a 
world  true  morality  teaches  as  the  supreme  virtues,  sym- 
pathy and  pity.  Man  must  suppress  his  will,  his  selfish 
desires,  "in  order  to  enjoy  happiness  or  at  least  to  be  at 
peace.  This  is  possible  in  several  ways.  The  artistic  or 
philosophical  genius  may  be  delivered  from  the  selfish 
will,  forget  himself,  lose  himself  in  artistic  contemplation 
or  philosophical  thought.  .  .  .  The  individual  can  also 
free  himself  from  his  selfish  will  by  contemplating  the 


ROMANTICISM  373 

futility  of  all  desire  and  the  illusoriness  of  individual  exist- 
ence. .  .  .  The  best  way  is  total  negation  of  the  will 
in  an  ascetic  life,  such  as  is  practised  by  Christian  ascetics 
and  Buddhist  saints.  Resignation  and  will-lessness  ensue, 
the  will  is  dead."  ^ 

While  romanticism  spread  to  Germany  through  the 
influence  especially  of  Rousseau's  writings  and  while  it 
continued  there  to  inspire  the  German  idealism,  it  was 
spreading  also  in  France  and  from  France  and  Germany  to 
England.  Thus  by  the  early  nineteenth  century  it  had 
become  a  distinct  trend  in  European  thought.^ 

3.  Romanticism  as  a  philosophical  doctrine. — Behind 
romanticism  as  a  philosophy  are  two  principles.  First, 
man  is  not  fundamentally  intellectual.  Rather  he  is 
fundamentally  a  creature  with  instincts  and  feelings; 
and  his  instinctive  and  emotional  life  should  dominate 
his  career  and  give  him  the  principles  of  both  his  concep- 
tion of  the  world  and  his  conception  of  life.  Expressed 
in  other  words,  the  poet  or  the  saint  is  a  truer  and  better 
guide  in  the  great  enterprise  of  human  life  and  thought 
than  is  the  scientist.  Religion,  morals,  art,  literature, 
social  and  political  philosophy,  and  education  should 
recognize  this  fundamental  fact  of  human  nature.  Re- 
ligion is  not  a  sort  of  mathematics  or  chemistry  to  be 

1  Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  490. 

2  Among  the  prominent  earlier  thinkers  allied  to  the  Romantic 
movement  were  the  following:  Rousseau  (fl.  c.  1750);  Kant  {fl.  c. 
1765);  Jacobi  C^.  c.  1785);  Fichte  {fl.  c.  1800);  ScheUing  {fl.  c.  1815); 
Hegel  {fl.  c.  1810);  Schleiermacher  {fl.  c.  1810);  and  Schopenhauer 
{fl.  c.  1830).  The  great  leaders  of  early  Romanticism  in  German 
literature  were  Herder,  Goethe  and  Schiller.  Among  early  French 
and  English  literary  romanticists  were:  Bishop  Percy  (whose  "i?e- 
liques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry,  published  in  1765,  has  justly  been 
described  as  'the  Bible  of  the  Romantic  refomaation'"),  St.  Martin 
(in  religion),  Madame  de  Stael,  Chateaubriand,  Lamartine,  Lamen- 
nais,  Hugo,  Gautier,  Cowper,  Blake,  Bums,  Walter  Scott,  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  Lamb,  Keats  and  SheUey. 


374      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

proved  and  taught  by  argument  and  evidence.  Rather 
it  is  a  matter  of  the  heart  to  be  beheved  because  rehgious 
intuition  finds  it  true  and  to  be  accepted  as  the  controller 
of  men's  lives  because  their  hearts  have  been  won  over  to 
it  as  the  greatest  and  most  satisfying  adventure  upon 
which  can  man  enter.  Theology  and  dogmas,  formal 
religion  and  its  institutions  contradict  the  true  spirit 
of  religion  and  even  rob  the  religious  Hfe  of  its  true  inward- 
ness. True  religion  and  undefiled  can  dwell  in  the  simplest 
life  and  in  the  humblest  of  intellects  and  expresses  itself 
in  the  good  will,  in  the  life  of  gentleness,  faith,  courage  and 
sweetness,  in  devotion  and  self-sacrifice,  in  love  and  in 
otherworldliness  and  in  the  contemplation  of  the  divine. 
Morahty  again  is  not  a  science  but  is  essentially  the  good 
will  and  conscientiousness.  The  humblest  man  intellec- 
tually is  as  capable  of  being  good  as  is  the  wisest.  In  art 
romanticism  expresses  itself  in  a  disregard  of  form  and  in 
a  richness  and  exuberance  of  feeling  and  sentiment.  It 
loves  nature  rather  than  cities  and  culture,  exalts  the 
sentiments  of  the  lover  and  the  picturesque  life  of  the 
peasant  and  the  lowly,  is  interested  in  adventure  and  self- 
sacrifice  and  is  filled  with  a  sense  of  the  mystery  of  life 
and  reality.  The  same  traits  characterize  its  poetry  and 
other  literature.  In  its  political  theory  it  sees  not  in  man's 
social  life  a  contract  or  a  cold-blooded  enterprise  governed 
by  self-interest  and  intellect.  Rather  it  beholds  in  society 
a  vast  organism  in  which  all  men  are  members  one  of 
another,  an  organism  governed  by  its  instinctive  ideals 
and  pressing  onward  toward  their  realization  without 
seeing  explicitly  and  concretely  what  these  ideals  are. 
In  education  it  refuses  to  regard  the  child's  mind  as  an 
empty  tablet  on  which  civilization  is  to  write  its  artificial 
and  arbitrary  lessons.  Instead,  the  child's  mind  is  an 
unfolding  mind  with  its  own  natural  course  of  develop- 
ment and  its  education  should  not  be  forced  on  it  from 


ROMANTICISM  375 

without  but  should  be  governed  by  the  child's  own  native 
impulses  and  interests.  The  child  has  its  own  rights, 
its  rights  to  be  a  person  self-directed  and  self-instructed; 
and  these  rights  are  prior  to  those  of  artificial  culture. 
Finally,  to  romanticism  the  real  world  is  not  the  world  of 
atoms  and  scientific  abstractions  but  a  world  full  of  life, 
overflowing  with  life  and  with  feeling,  a  world  seen  and  felt 
by  man's  heart  but  hidden  from  man's  scientific  research. 

Second,  behind  romanticism  is  the  dawning  and  later 
the  explicit  recognition  of  evolution  everywhere  in  nature 
and  in  the  life  of  man.  The  world  and  the  living  creature 
are  not  machines  or  mathematical  puzzles  but  growing 
entities.  Life  is  therefore  a  truer  and  philosophically  a 
more  genuinely  fundamental  principle  than  is  the  mathe- 
matical and  mechanical.  Better  as  a  philosophical  notion 
even  than  life  is  mind  with  its  instincts,  or  the  will  in  the 
broad  sense  that  includes  the  instinctive  impulses.  The 
world  is  not  scientific,  rational  or  logical.  Whatever  the 
place  and  value  of  science,  it  is  false  if  taken  literally  as  a 
description  of  the  real.  The  world  cannot  be  described 
in  terms  of  concepts;  rather  it  can  only  be  intuited  and 
felt.  Thus  perceived  it  is  an  evolving  will,  a  will  driven 
onward  by  its  own  impulses,  a  will  struggling  to  realize 
its  own  blind  yearnings,  a  will  infinitely  rich  in  the  variety 
and  profusion  of  its  creations.  The  same  will  is  seen  in 
man  and  his  career.  Man's  history  also  is  the  evolution 
of  a  will,  a  will  that  is  bhnd  and  instinctive,  a  will  governed 
not  by  foresight  but  by  longing.  Thus  human  history  is 
a  mighty  onward  movement  whose  goal  cannot  be  fore- 
seen or  even  wisely  directed  by  man's  intellect.  Whither 
it  goes  we  cannot  foretell.  The  best  we  can  do  is  to  see 
whence  it  comes,  and  to  do  this  we  must  study  the  in- 
stincts and  the  heart  of  man.^ 

1  This  extreme  anti-intellectualism  has  not  been  shared  by  all 
romanticists.    Evolution  has  its  formula.    The  famous  instance  of 


376      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

For  further  study  read: 

Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  164-189; 

Watson,  Selections  from  Kant,  225-258; 

Fichte,  Vocation  of  Man; 

Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  II,  139-289; 

Morley,  Essay  on  Rousseau, 
F(yr  more  extensive  study  read: 

Schopenhaur  (transl.  Haldane  and  Kemp),  World  as  Will 
and  Idea; 

Whittaker,  T.,  Schopenhaur,  1909; 

Wallace,  W.,  Life  of  Schopenhaur; 

Benn,  History  of  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century. 

belief  in  such  a  formula  is  the  doctrine  of  the  great  German  philos- 
opher Hegel  and  of  his  school.  The  universal  formula  of  evolution, 
according  to  Hegel,  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  evolving  individual 
reason.  That  is  to  say,  all  things  in  nature  and  in  hiunan  society 
exhibit  in  their  evolution  the  same  succession  of  stages  as  does  the 
child's  intellect  developing  into  the  intellect  of  the  mature  and  wisest 
philosopher.  By  discovering  therefore  this  formula  the  philosopher 
becomes  a  universal  scientist,  for  he  has  discovered  the  most  im- 
portant secret  of  the  universe,  its  very  essence  and  law,  a  law  ex- 
hibited in  the  development  of  everything.  What  is  according  to  the 
Hegelian  the  law  of  the  developing  reason?  The  chief  characteristic 
of  the  chUd's  knowledge  is  its  one-sidedness.  It  fails  quite  to  see  the 
complexity  of  any  problem  it  tries  to  solve  and  therefore  reaches 
absurdly  simple  solutions.  As  its  knowledge  increases  it  sees  some 
of  the  other  sides  of  these  problems,  the  contradictory  aspects,  that 
is,  contradictory  to  the  aspect  first  seen.  The  child  may  now  make 
the  error  of  being  one-sided  by  favoring  its  new  discoveiy  and  may 
solve  its  original  problem  by  going  to  the  opposite  extreme.  How- 
ever, if  the  child  continues  to  grow  in  wisdom  it  will  see  many  sides  to 
the  complex  matter  in  which  it  is  interested  and  wiU  gain  a  view  that 
is  itself  many-sided.  It  wiU  get  solutions  to  its  problems  which 
harmonize  or  synthesize  the  many  aspects  of  the  things  studied. 
Stated  as  a  formula,  intellectual  development  is  a  passing  from  one- 
sided beliefs  to  beliefs  that  are  many-sided,  to  beliefs  that  give  co- 
herent, synthetic  or  all  inclusive  insight;  and  the  final  goal  of  in- 
tellectual development,  the  perfect  intellect,  is  the  completely 
coherent  and  aU  inclusive  knower,  the  knower  who  takes  all  things  or 


ROMANTICISM  377 

4.  Romanticism  and  science. — As  romanticism  in 
other  periods  of  human  history  reacted  against  science  and 
naturalism;  so  has  nineteenth  century  romanticism. 
Romanticism  brings  the  general  charge  against  science 
that  it  has  robbed  man  of  his  spiritual  life,  that  it  has 

aspects  into  consideration,  who  is  perfectly  consistent,  or  coherent, 
who  sees  the  world  in  its  infinite  complexity  yet  sees  it  as  a  unity,  as  a 
perfectly  coherent  system,  as  an  organic  unity  including  infinite 
diversity. 

Correspondingly  all  evolution  proceeds  in  one  direction  only  to 
take  later  the  opposite  direction  and  finally  to  combine  and  reconcile 
the  two  tendencies.  In  short,  evolution  is  a  harmony  of  discords,  is  a 
synthesis  of  opposites.  Nature  and  life  and  society  never  move  in 
straight  lines.  If  they  did  they  would  remain  simple;  but  they  gain 
the  complexity  and  rich  variety  which  they  always  exhibit  by  the 
fact  that  they  are  constantly  moving  in  opposite  directions,  then 
harmonizing  these  opposites  only  at  the  next  stage  to  create  opposites 
again  and  so  on  until  infinite  diversity  harmonized  in  unity  is  reached 
in  the  universe's  ideal  goal. 

This  formula  is  not  merely  that  of  existence  but  also  that  of  the 
HegeUan's  whole  system  of  values,  his  formulas  of  the  good  and  the 
beautiful.  Perfection  means  unified  diversity,  the  complete  recon- 
ciliation of  opposites.  The  good  life  is  not  the  simple  fife  but  the 
life  that  has  a  wealth  of  diversity  and  also  harmony,  consistency  or 
coherence.  Moreover,  as  the  very  law  of  universal  evolution  is  a 
passing  from  a  lower  stage  toward  the  perfect,  the  Hegefian  is  a 
thorough  optimist.  The  world  itself  is  good  and  beautiful  and  per- 
fect, all  evil  is  finally  reconciled  and  made  good  in  the  ultimate  unity 
of  all  things,  all  discord  and  ugliness  and  imperfection  disappear  as 
our  knowledge  goes  on  from  stage  to  stage  and  we  see  things  co- 
herently. Thus  if  the  world  seems  evil,  it  seems  so  only  because  we 
are  still  children  with  one-sided  knowledge,  for  were  our  knowledge 
perfect  all  would  be  seen  to  be  perfect. 

Here  arises  in  Hegelianism  the  usual  distinction  made  by  mysticism 
between  the  world  as  it  seems  and  as  it  really  is.  The  world  that  we 
see  with  our  childish  eyes  is  mere  appearance.  In  order  to  see  the 
true  world,  reality,  we  have  to  become  philosophers.  In  short,  this 
particular  type  of  romanticism,  like  the  mysticism  of  the_  middle 
ages  and  of  Hellenism,  ends  by  giving  us  the  heavenly  vision,  the 
vision  of  the  world  not  as  it  appears  to  sense  or  to  science  but  as  it 
appears  to  some  super-rational  faculty. 


378      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

impoverished  his  emotional  Hfe,  that  it  has  transformed 
his  rehgion  into  atheism  or  a  mere  formalism,  that  it  has 
deprived  his  art  of  beauty  or  has  put  utiUty  in  the  place 
of  beauty,  and  finally  that  it  has  utterly  deceived  man 
by  giving  him  a  merely  artificial  abstract  scheme  called 
science  and  by  identifying  this  abstraction  with  reality. 
This  last  charge  is  the  most  serious  philosophically,  for 
naturalism  claims  at  least  a  firm  grasp  upon  fact  and 
reality.  Briefly  stated,  the  grounds  of  the  charge  made 
against  science  as  a  theory  of  reality  are  these:  Science 
employs  as  her  chief  methods  analysis  and  abstraction, 
whereas  reality  is  organic  or  concrete  and  in  either  case 
defies  analysis. 

As  organic,  reahty  defies  scientific  analysis,  formal 
logic  and  the  type  of  explanation  that  presupposes  these. 
ReaHty  is  an  organic  unity.  It  is  not  a  whole  made  up  of 
parts.  The  parts  are  not  related  to  one  another  externally 
but  internally.  Each  is  genuinely  a  member  of  the  other 
and  is  what  it  is  because  of  the  others.  As  our  hand  can- 
not exist  without  the  rest  of  the  body  and  as  our  hand  is 
what  it  is  because  of  its  relation  to  the  whole  body;  so 
every  part  of  reality  is  what  it  is  and  even  exists  only 
because  of  its  membership  in  the  whole.  In  other  words, 
reality  can  be  understood  only  in  its  entirety.  Let  me 
repeat,  reality  is  a  unity.  The  so-called  unity  of  the 
special  sciences  is  a  mere  mechanical  unity  not  a  genuine 
unity,  rather  it  is  a  mere  assemblage  of  parts  any  one  of 
which  could  be  different  without  forcing  the  other  parts 
to  change.  The  genuine  unity  is  organic  and  as  such  has 
to  be  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  whole.  Thus, 
however  valuable  science  may  be  as  a  utilitarian  instru- 
ment, it  essentially  belies  the  very  nature  of  reahty  if 
used  as  a  theory  of  reahty.  Science  analyzes,  science 
deduces,  science  is  abstract;  whereas  reality  is  essentially 
unanalyzable,  reality  can  be  understood  only  as  a  whole, 


ROMANTICISM  379 

reality  is  concrete.  Such  is  the  typical  Hegelian  protest 
against  the  special  sciences  taken  realistically. 

Another  typical  protest  of  contemporary  romanticism  ^ 
against  science  is  that  science  reduces  the  world  to  the 
static  and  abstract  world  of  mathematics.  The  funda- 
mental notions  of  science  are  logical  and  static  and  her 
formulae  are  true  only  of  a  static  mathematical  world; 
whereas  reality  is  alogical  and  dynamic.  Science  is  funda- 
mentally not  evolutionistic  but  mechanistic;  for  science 
seeks  to  explain  and  to  explain  is  to  deduce  and  to  deduce 
is  to  assume  that  the  premises  are  sufficient  and  this  finally 
is  to  assume  with  mechanics  that  the  future  is  but  a 
changed  configuration  of  the  past.  In  contrast,  reality 
is  fruitful,  is  spontaneously  bringing  into  existence  the 
absolutely  new  and  is  essentially  inexplicable. 

Science  is  logical  and  static.  Science  seeks  entities  that 
do  not  change,  science  seeks  constant  laws,  science  seeks 
to  eliminate  every  change  except  that  of  motion,  and 
science  seeks  to  reduce  every  problem  to  one  in  mathe- 
matics. In  short,  science  is  mathematical,  but  reality  is 
distinctly  non-mathematical.  Qualities,  intensities,  du- 
rations, the  good  and  the  beautiful,  life  and  growth,  change 
and  development  defy  mathematics.  They  defy  even 
measurement.^ 

1  The  Hegelian  protest  is  still  partly  intellectualistic  whereas  this 
protest  is  frankly  anti-intellectualistic.  As  such  it  is  more  closely 
related  to  the  thought  of  Schopenhauer  than  to  that  of  Hegel  and  has 
received  its  most  powerful  and  thorough  presentation  in  the  writings 
of  the  noted  contemporary  philosopher  Bergson. 

2  When  we  pretend  to  measure  any  of  these  entities,  we  always 
substitute  for  it  first  a  mathematical  entity.  For  example,  when  we 
measure  time,  we  substitute  the  spatial,  as  the  arc  of  the  heavens 
through  which  the  sun  has  moved.  Pure  time  is  not  motion  through 
space  and  simply  cannot  be  measured.  Take  another  instance.  We 
pretend  to  measure  temperature  by  means  of  a  thermometer,  but 
what  the  thermometer  reaUy  measures  is  the  length  of  a  column  of 
mercury;  and  even  though  this  length  is  related  to  temperature,  the 


380      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

Science  is  not  evolutionistic,  whereas  reality  is.  The 
so-called  evolution  of  science  reduces  merely  to  the  chang- 
ing position  of  ultimately  constant  entities  as  is  quite 
apparent  in  celestial  mechanics.  Genuine  evolution  means 
a  budding,  a  bringing  forth,  a  creation,  the  arising  of  the 
new,  the  onward  rush  of  impulse  and  history.  To  say 
that  there  is  no  such  evolution  is  to  deny  our  most  intimate 
experiences,  is  to  deny  the  self-evident.  As  we  ourselves 
live  and  grow,  as  we  think  and  strive,  as  we  are  driven 
by  impulse  and  desire,  we  experience  the  very  essence 
of  the  real,  a  reahty  that  defies  mechanical  explanation. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Bergson,  H.  (transl.  Mitchell),  Creative  Evolution,  1911; 
Bergson,  H.  (transl.  Pogson),  Time  and  Free  Will,  1910; 
Bergson,  H.  (transl.  Hulme),  Introduction  to  Metaphysics, 

1903; 
Joachim,  H.  H.,  The  Nature  of  Truth,  1906. 

5.  Romanticism  and  primitive  thought. — Romanticism, 
in  contrast  with  intellectuaUsm,  has  a  marked  respect  for 
the  folk  mind  and  the  group  mind.  It  believes  in  the 
heart  of  man,  in  the  intuitions  of  the  peasant  and  in  the 
instincts  and  the  total  mind  of  the  human  being.  All  of 
man's  nature  is  to  be  satisfied  and  man  is  more  than  in- 
tellect. This  makes  romanticism  not  only  fond  of  the 
natural  and  primitive  but  also  confident  of  their  right  to 
be  and  of  their  right  to  i-ule,  and  not  only  reverent  toward 
the  religion  of  the  folk  but  also  credulous  of  the  innate 
wisdom  and  correctness  of  the  group  mind.  It  is  thus 
socialistic  and  not  individualistic  as  is  intellectuahsm. 
Even  civilization,  so  admired  by  intellectuaUsm,  is  dis- 
trusted as  artificial  by  the  romanticist.  In  the  language 
of  a  true  romanticist,  George  Tyrrell,  civilization  is  a 

relation  defies  being  reduced  to  any  mathematical  formula  and  thus 
the  temperature  always  escapes  being  measured. 


ROMANTICISM  381 

clearing  in  the  jungle  or  an  artificial  garden.  It  can  exist 
as  long  as  we  are  able  to  keep  the  weeds  under  control; 
but  if  we  neglect  our  garden  for  a  month  and  return  we 
shall  see  that  it  is  overgrown  with  weeds.  Moreover,  in 
the  long  run  the  jungle  will  conquer  in  spite  of  man's 
intellect,  care  and  labor.  In  this  figure,  the  world  is  the 
jungle,  primitive  man  is  the  jungle,  the  instinctive  nature 
of  each  of  us  is  the  jungle;  whereas  man's  intellectual  enter- 
prise is  the  clearing  or  artificial  garden.  Let  us  then  recog- 
nize not  only  the  hopelessness  of  the  struggle  to  make  man 
thoroughly  intellectual  but  the  absurdity,  error  and  bUnd- 
ness  of  trying.  For  example,  take  religion.  Religion  is 
the  product  of  the  group  mind.  Religion  came  out  of  the 
jungle.  It  cannot  be  made  the  artificial  thing  that  intellec- 
tualism  has  tried  to  make  it.  Religion  is  essentially  primi- 
tive and  must  forever  remain  such  if  it  is  to  continue  to 
be  the  religion  of  the  people.  Magic,  myth,  ceremonial 
and  mystery  are  its  very  essence;  whereas  rehgion  robbed 
of  these  is  a  mere  petrified  vestige  of  what  was  once  re- 
ligion. 

A  similar  truth  holds  of  society.  Intellectualism  creates 
policies  that  are  utterly  Utopian  and  impossible.  The 
group  mind  with  all  its  instinctive  and  blind  impulses  is 
the  true  power  creating  the  state  and  the  culture  of  so- 
ciety. Human  history  is  not  the  result  of  rational  fore- 
sight but  of  impulse  and  blind  groping  in  which  the  group 
mind  is  seeking  to  satisfy  all  the  needs  of  man.  And  re- 
member that  these  needs  are  revealed  in  the  instinctive 
man  and  are  not  the  discovery,  or  creation  of  reason. 
Finally,  a  similar  truth  holds  of  the  entire  human  enter- 
prise. It  began  in  the  jungle  and  it  will  end  in  the  jungle. 
It  can  never  successfully  be  naturalized  in  the  artificial 
gardens  of  civilization  and  intellectualism. 

Therefore  says  the  romanticist,  the  intellectualist  may 
well  respect  the  primitive  mind  and  the  group  mind;  and 


382      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

whether  he  does  or  not,  they  will  persist  and  will  in  the 
end  control  him.  However,  let  him  not  yield  to  these 
primitive  and  group  minds  grudgingly;  rather  let  him  see 
that  they  alone  deserve  confidence,  for  they  alone  are 
right  and  truthful,  they  alone  have  seen  man  thus  far 
on  his  long  journey  and  they  alone  are  able  to  see  him  to  the 
journey's  end. 

6.  The  influence  of  romanticism  upon  the  thought  of 
the  nineteenth  centitry. — The  influence  of  romanticism 
upon  the  thought  of  the  nineteenth  century  can  hardly 
be  overestimated.  The  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies stand  in  marked  contrast  in  ahnost  every  field  of 
spiritual  life,  and  this  difference  of  attitude  is  due  pre- 
eminently to  the  romantic  movement.  The  chief  places 
in  which  the  new  attitude  has  manifested  itself,  have  been 
already  mentioned:  art,  hterature,  religion,  and  the  nu- 
merous departments  of  historical  research.  The  revival 
of  gothic  architecture,  the  love  of  nature,  the  interest 
in  the  folk-life  and  customs,  the  appeal  of  romantic  passion 
and  the  fondness  for  content  as  opposed  to  form  illustrate 
the  change  in  art.  The  romantic  poetry  of  Burns,  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  Shelley  and  Keats  and  the  fiction  of 
Scott,  Hugo  and  Dumas  illustrate  the  new  attitude  in  liter- 
ature. Methodism,  the  Oxford  movement  in  the  Church  of 
England  and  the  general  revival  of  the  spirit  and  emotions 
of  medieval  rehgion  illustrate  the  transformation  that  has 
taken  place  in  the  rehgious  life.  The  universal  interest 
in  the  past  from  which  the  modern  world  is  descended, 
in  its  fife,  customs,  art,  language,  literature,  religion  and 
institutions  illustrate  the  extreme  change  from  the  narrow 
interest  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  the  future  and  in  the 
Utopian  belief  in  human  perfectibility. 

Such  differences  indicate  not  merely  superficial  changes 
but  such  fundamental  changes  in  thought  and  feeling  as 
we  have  called  philosophical.    Without  difficulty  and  with 


ROMANTICISM  383 

conviction,  numerous  intellectual  leaders  in  the  nineteenth 
century  and  the  thoughtful  people  whom  they  have  in- 
fluenced, think  of  the  world  in  terms  of  life  and  will  rather 
than  in  terms  of  mechanics  or  physical  science;  and  the 
immanent  God  of  pantheism  has  become  almost  a  popu- 
lar belief.  Spinoza,  Hegel,  Schopenhauer  and,  in  our  day, 
Bergson  receive  widely  a  hearing,  while  a  hearing  is  but 
grudgingly  given  to  the  apostles  of  the  Enlightenment  and 
the  French  Revolution.  All  of  this  has  meant  a  radical 
change  in  the  method  and  means  by  which  thoughtful  men 
endeavor  to  justify  to  themselves  what  they  believe  and 
what  they  hope,  from  the  means  and  methods  employed, 
for  example,  by  Descartes  and  the  eighteenth  century  reli- 
gious thinkers.  In  a  sentence,  the  primacy  of  the  heart 
and  will  over  the  intellect,  and  the  intuition  of  the  mystic 
are  respectively  typical  principles  and  typical  courts  of 
ultimate  appeal  in  the  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

McGiffert,  A.  C,  The  Rise  of  Modern  Religious  Ideas,  1915; 

Eucken,  R.  (transl.  Pogson),  Life  of  the  Spirit; 

Eucken,  R.  (transl,  Gibson),  The  Meaning  and  Value  of 
Life; 

Inge,  W.  R.,  Christian  Mysticism,  1899; 

Tyrrell,  G.,  Lex  credendi,  1906;  Lex  orandi,  1904;  Through 
Scylla  and  Charybdis,  1907; 

Symons,  A.,  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry,  1909; 

Beers,  H.  A.,  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  1910; 

Beers,  H.  A.,  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  1901; 

Phelps,  W.  L.,  Beginnings  of  the  English  Romantic  Move- 
ment, 1893; 

Pellissier,  G.  (transl.  Brinton),  The  Literary  Movement  in 
France  during  the  Nineteenth  Century,  1897. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES 

1.  Introductory. — The  field  of  study  in  this  chapter  is 
approximately  the  past  fifty  years,  the  last  third  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century.  In  this  brief  period  is  to  be  found  all  that  is 
older  in  philosophic  thought  and  much  that  is  new;  and 
the  old  and  the  new  together  make  present  philosophic 
thought  extremely  varied  and  highly  composite.  On  the 
one  hand,  all  the  earlier  movements  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  modern  times  have  survived  into  the  present. 
On  the  other  hand,  genuinely  new  elements  or  movements 
have  become  prominent  in  the  last  fifty  years  and  have 
given  the  present  age  a  characteristic  and  peculiar  trend. 
On  the  one  hand,  we  are  children  of  the  past  and  exemplify 
various  inherited  strains  of  older  philosophic  thought. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  past  fifty  years  are  as  great  for 
genuine  philosophical  progress  as  for  scientific  discovery 
and  utilitarian  invention.  The  total  resultant  of  these 
many  movements  has  made  us  philosophically  different 
even  from  the  Europe  and  America  of  only  fifty  years  ago. 

With  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  century  we  share  the 
older  rationalism  and  mechanistic  naturalism,  the  older 
phenomenalism,  positivism  and  idealism;  and  with  Europe 
of  the  nineteenth  century  we  share  the  evolutionistic 
philosophy  and  the  romantic  philosophy.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  French  Revolution  and  all  that  it  connotes  in 
the  life  of  Europe  of  a  hundred  years  ago  is  still  a  genuine 
element  in  our  present  spiritual,  intellectual,  moral  and 

384 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         385 

political  life.  On  the  other  hand,  romanticism  and  evolu- 
tionary philosophy  have  become  prominent  and  powerful 
elements  to  be  found  throughout  the  intellectual  and 
practical  life  of  the  western  world.  But  at  the  same  time 
the  change  in  the  philosophy  of  the  intellectual  world 
from  that  typical  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  to  that 
typical  of  the  late  nineteenth  is  immense.  Besides  roman- 
ticism and  the  evolutionary  philosophy  whose  influence 
in  producing  this  change  I  have  already  discussed,  there 
remain,  it  seems  to  me,  four  prominent  factors  to  be  studied 
in  this  chapter.  First,  there  is  the  philosophical  influ- 
ence upon  the  older  naturalism  of  the  exceeding  numerous 
discoveries  in  the  mathematical,  physical  and  biologi- 
cal sciences.  Second,  there  is  the  outgrowing  of  the  older 
rationalism  and  the  rising  in  its  place  of  experimentalism 
and  the  allied  intellectual  attitudes,  a  change  due  not 
only  to  the  evolutionary  philosophy  but  also  to  the  growth 
of  the  field  of  experimental  research.  Third,  there  is  the 
appearance  of  efforts  to  go  back  beyond  Cartesian  dualism 
and  all  its  resulting  philosophies,  which  means  to  go  back 
beyond  Greek  science  and  to  interpret  anew  in  the  light 
of  modern  science  the  facts  of  mental  life.  Fourth  and 
last,  there  is  the  great  moral  and  political  change  from  the 
individualism  of  the  older  democratic  movements  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  the  implicit  socialism  of  contempo- 
rary moralists  and  political  theorists  and  leaders. 

In  the  first  place,  the  world  has  come  to  seem  to  us  vastly 
more  complex  than  it  did  to  Laplace  and  to  his  contempo- 
raries who  entertained  the  mechanistic  naturalism  founded 
on  mechanics  and  the  gravitational  astronomy.  It  may  be 
that  mechanistic  naturalism  will  be  victor  in  the  long  run; 
but  even  so,  the  scientist  of  to-day  apprehends  how  very 
far  we  still  are  from  knowing  the  complex  world  revealed 
to  us  in  physics,  chemistry  and  physiology  to  be  explicable 
solely  in  terms  of  the  propositions  and  notions  of  mechan- 


386      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ics.^  In  the  second  place,  the  intellectual  optimism  ex- 
emplified in  the  rationalism  of  the  seventeenth  and  eight- 
eenth centuries  has  come  to  seem  quite  adolescent.  Ex- 
perimentalism  and,  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the  word, 
pragmatism  are  to-day  characteristic  philosophical  atti- 
tudes taken  by  intellectual  and  scientific  leaders  in  the 
world  of  thought.  In  the  third  place,  though  the  vast 
majority  of  intellectual  men  are  still  Cartesians  in  their 
psychological  thought,  distinct  signs  are  visible  among 
biologists,  psychologists  and  philosophers  of  dissatisfac- 
tion with  and  perplexity  about  the  pre-scientific  concep- 
tion of  the  mind  persisting  in  Cartesian  dualism  and  in  its 
logical  consequences.  Behaviorism  and  in  particular  a 
new  realism  are  offered  to  supplant  the  subjectivism  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  phenomenalism  and 
idealism.  Finally,  a  new  social  religion  has  been  spread- 
ing throughout  industrial  democracy,  a  religion  that  may 
be  called,  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the  word,  socialism, 
supplanting  the  individualism  of  the  older  liberal  and 
in  particular  supplanting  his  belief  in  ruthless  competi- 
tion. 

Let  us  select  as  the  subject  of  this  chapter  these  four 
matters  which  seem  to  be  the  four  new  and  major  factors 
(in  addition  to  romanticism  and  the  doctrine  of  evolution) 
in  producing  the  marked  change  in  philosophic  thought 
that  has  taken  place  during  the  nineteenth  century  and 
especially  during  the  past  fifty  years :  namely,  the  change 
in  naturalism;  the  growing  experimentalism;  the  new 
realism ;  and  the  social  democracy.  And  as  a  preUminary 
to  this  study,  let  us  first  review  briefly  the  groAvth  and 
philosophical  development  of  science  during  the  same 
period. 

'  Even  gravitational  astronomy  itself  may  yet  be  based  on  postu- 
lates that  are  not  deducible  from  mechanics  but  from  a  new  science, 
the  science  of  the  ether. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         387 

For  further  study  read: 

Hadley,  A.  T.,  Some  Influences  in  Modem  Philosophical 
Thought,  1913. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Merz,  J.  T.,  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth 

Century,  1904-14; 
Perry,  R.  B.,  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  1912; 
Stein,  L.,  Philosophische  Stromungen  der  Gegenwart,  1908. 

2.  The  scientific  achievement  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury.— The  growth  of  modern  science  is  comparable  to 
the  growth  of  a  farm  to  which  field  after  field  has  been 
added  at  different  times  and  on  which  the  methods  of 
cultivation  have  everywhere  tended  to  pass  from  those  of 
extensive  to  those  of  intensive  farming.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  certain  fields  were  added  to  the  few  culti- 
vated in  the  earlier  centuries  and  their  cultivation  reached 
a  truly  scientific  standard  of  excellence.  These  fields  were 
especially  astronomy,  mathematics,  mechanics  and  physi- 
ology. The  eighteenth  century  witnessed  a  more  intensive 
cultivation  of  these  fields  and  the  addition  especially  of 
chemistry,  geology,  zoology  and  botany  as  new  fields  of 
scientific  labor.  The  nineteenth  century  witnessed  vast 
achievement  in  the  older  fields,  the  raising  of  the  culti- 
vation of  the  later  fields  to  a  thoroughly  scientific  level, 
and  the  broadening  out  of  the  whole  domain  of  science 
until  it  included  the  all  but  innumerable  fields  of  present 
research. 

During  the  nineteenth  century  the  older  fields  of  science 
have  themselves  become  vast  domains.  Mathematics 
has  expanded  far  beyond  what  a  man  can  master  in  a  life- 
time. Physical  science  has  come  to  include  the  vast 
fields  of  electricity,  magnetism,  light  and  heat.  The  older 
fields  of  gravitational  and  observational  astronomy  have 
been  greatly  enlarged  through  the  discoveries  made  possi- 
ble by  far  better  instruments  and  methods,  and  to  gravi- 


388      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tational  astronomy  has  been  added  the  field  of  physical 
astronomy.  The  small  and  struggling  science  of  chemistry 
of  the  eighteenth  century  has  become  the  enormous  en- 
terprise and  field  of  present  chemical  research.  Geology 
and  mineralogy  were  added  to  the  other  sciences  hardly 
before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  they  have 
since  become  extensive  domains  of  investigation.  The 
already  large  fields  of  eighteenth  century  zoology  and 
botany  have  been  added  to  not  only  by  further  exploring 
within  the  older  territory  of  morphology  but  also  by  annex- 
ing the  new  fields  of  embryology,  phylogeny,  protozoology 
and  protobotany.  But  the  older  fields  of  science  have  not 
only  become  vast  domains,  they  have  also  passed  from  the 
stages  of  pre-experimental,  or  the  early  stage  of  experi- 
mental cultivation,  to  that  of  the  elaborately  and  rigor- 
ously experimental. 

Not  only  have  the  older  fields  of  science  become  widely 
extended  during  the  nineteenth  century  but  new  fields 
have  been  added  to  science.  These  new  fields  are  in  gen- 
eral those  of  man  and  society,  and  of  the  history  of  all 
that  makes  up  human  culture.  True,  many  of  these  fields 
such  as  psychology,  politics  and  history  were  long  before 
fields  of  study  and  thought;  but  they  were  never  before 
truly  fields  of  that  systematic,  organized  and  genuinely 
inductive  research  attained  by  modern  science.  In  the 
first  half  of  the  century  in  Germany  and  as  part  of  the 
romantic  movement  came,  as  we  have  seen,  the  beginning 
of  that  mighty  movement  which  so  characterizes  the 
present  time,  namely,  historical  research.  The  field  of 
this  movement  at  first  included  besides  political,  or  gen- 
eral history,  especially  the  history  of  language,  of  art,  of 
thought  and  of  Christianity;  but  since  that  time  it  has 
come  to  include  the  evolutionary  study  of  virtually  every 
aspect  or  part  of  man's  life.  In  anthropology,  psychology 
and  allied  subjects  man  and  his  mind  have  come  to  be 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         389 

studied  elaborately  and  systematically.  In  social  and 
political  science,  and  in  economics  the  older  more  or  less 
speculative  and  rationalistic  writings  of  thoughtful  but 
isolated  men  have  tended  to  become  the  more  and  more 
co-operative,  inductive  and  systematic  research  of  a  body 
of  scientists.  However,  this  transformation  of  history, 
anthropology,  psychology,  social,  political  and  economic 
science  from  rationalistic  sciences  into  genuinely  experi- 
mental, inductive  and  organized  forms  of  research  is  rel- 
atively recent  and  is  by  no  means  complete.  Still,  that 
it  is  taking  place  is  one  of  the  most  significant  facts  in  the 
philosophical  development  of  our  time. 

This  mere  skeleton  outline  of  the  scientific  achievement 
of  the  past  one  hundred  years,  inadequate  as  it  necessarily 
is,  is  surely  enough  to  make  us  perceive  at  least  the  vast- 
ness  of  the  growth  of  science  during  the  recent  decades  of 
European  history.  Nothing  in  the  entire  history  of 
science  is  comparable  to  it  in  mere  vastness  and  it  makes 
our  age  in  this  respect  unique  in  the  history  of  man.  It 
has  made  us  scientific  in  place  after  place  where  our  fore- 
fathers were  prescientific  and  even  primitive.  It  has  sub- 
stituted skill  and  insight  in  countless  situations  of  life 
where  our  ancestors  could  respond  only  instinctively, 
blindly,  or  emotionally.^  Not  only  has  this  vast  growth  of 
science  transformed  completely  the  world  we  understand 
but  it  has  also  had  two  irmnense  economic  and  political 
consequences,  a  direct  one,  the  enormous  increase  in  wealth 
and  population  and  the  marked  shortening  of  the  distance 
between  place  and  place  and,  an  indirect  one,  the  greater 
socialization  within  the  nations  and  within  the  inter- 
national world.     It  has  made  man  more  independent  of 

^  Consider  but  one  prominent  example,  the  winning  of  a  knowl- 
edge and  control  of  infectious  and  contagious  diseases  and  the  out- 
growing of  the  hit  and  miss  medical  practice  of  our  forefathers  but  a 
few  generations  ago. 


390      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

his  natural  environment  than  ever  before,  and  it  has 
given  him  a  self-confidence  to  undertake  and  to  control 
what  in  the  ancient  world  belonged  only  to  the  gods  to 
execute  and  to  administer.  Nonetheless,  increased  knowl- 
edge has  brought  an  increased  realization  of  ignorance  and 
a  corresponding  caution  and  modesty.  A  distinctly  hum- 
bler intellectualism  and  sense  of  power  has  superseded  the 
confidence  exhibited  by  our  fathers  in  the  heyday  of  early 
scientific  achievement.  In  other  words,  the  distinctly 
adolescent  self-confidence  exhibited  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  has  given 
place  to  a  caution  and  a  reserve  in  the  intellectual  life  of 
the  great  thinker  of  to-day  which  in  contrast  seems  to  mark 
manhood. 

For  further  and  for  more  extensive  study  read: 

{For  mathematics)  Merz,  History  of  European  Thought  in 

the  Nineteenth  Century,  chapter  XIII; 
Russell,  B.,  Recent  Work  on  the  Principles  of  Mathematics, 

in  International  Monthly,  1901,  4- 
{For  astronomy)  Berry,  Short  History  of  Astronomy,  323- 

409. 
{For  physics)  Merz,  ibid.,  chapters  VI  and  VII; 
Cajori,  History  of  Physics,  137-305; 
Whetham,  W.  C.  D.,  The  Recent  Development  of  Physical 

Science,  1909. 
{For  chemistry)  Tilden,  W.  A.,  Short  History  of  the  Progress 

of  Scientific  Chemistry  in  Our  Times,  1899; 
Thorpe,  T.  E.,  History  of  Chemistry,  1909-10; 
Meyers,  E.  S.  C,  History  of  Chemistry,  1906. 
{For  geology)  von  Zittel,  K.  A.  (transl.  Ogilvie-Gordon), 

History  of  Geology  and  Palaeontology,  1901. 
{For  biology)  Darwin  and  Modern  Science,  1909; 
Merz,  ibid.,  chapters  IX  and  X. 
{For  psychology)  Merz,  ibid.,  chapter  XI. 
{For  social  and  economic  science)  Robinson,  J.  H.,  The  New 

History,  especially  chapter  III; 


I 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         391 

Sociological  Papers,  1905,  The  Macmillan  Co.; 
Ingram,  J.  K.,  History  of  Political  Economy,  2d  ed.,  1907. 
{For  anthropology)  Haddon,  A.  C,  History  of  Anthropology, 
1910. 

3.  The  great  discoveries  of  marked  philosophical  im- 
portance.— The  science  of  mathematics  has  grown  not 
only  in  extent  but  also  philosophically  by  an  amount  that 
makes  the  mathematical  achievement  of  the  nineteenth 
century  comparable  to  that  of  the  golden  age  of  Greece. 
Beginning  with  the  labors  of  Gauss  (fl.  1820)  and  Cauchy 
(fl.  1830)  the  science  has  become  more  truly  deductive  and 
more  thoroughly  organized,  its  fundamental  notions  have 
been  rigorously  defined  and  its  fundamental  assumptions 
have  become  more  and  more  explicit.  The  general  ten- 
dency has  been  to  unify  mathematics.  The  most  impor- 
tant and  fundamental  notions  of  the  science,  many  of  them 
used  from  the  days  of  Greek  mathematics,  have  for  the 
first  time  in  history  been  rigorously  defined.  Prominent 
among  these  notions  are  those  of  number,  infinity,  order, 
continuity,  and  the  fundamental  operations  of  algebra 
and  the  fundamental  notions,  assumptions  and  trans- 
formations of  geometry.  Besides  making  the  science  more 
genuinely  rigorous,  deductive  and  simple  the  philosophical 
mathematician  has  come  to  a  clearer  apprehension  of  the 
nature  of  his  science.  This  has  led  to  one  of  the  most 
important  philosophical  discoveries  in  the  intellectual 
history  of  man,  to  the  discovery  that  pure  mathematics 
is  a  non-existential  science.  Ancient  thought  and  modern 
thought  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  nat- 
urally led  to  rationalism  because  the  thinker  believed  that 
he  had  in  mathematics  an  infallible  and  a  priori  theory  of 
reality;^  for  mathematics  seemed  an  instance  of  the  mind 

1  Of  such  rationalism  the  theory  of  Kant  is  a  prominent  example. 
Convinced  that  mathematics  is  not  an  experimental  science  but  a 
science  that  the  mind  achieves  by  its  own  intuition  and  convinced 


392      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

by  pure  reflection  and  independent  of  observation  and 
experiment  discovering  what  reality  has  to  be. 

In  physical  science  also,  besides  great  increase  in  infor- 
mation, there  has  been  great  progress  philosophically. 
The  sciences  of  light,  heat,  electricity  and  magnetism,  so 
largely  the  achievement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  have 
completely  transformed  our  insight  into  the  nature  of  the 
world  of  matter  and  energy.  Physical  research  has  added 
to  our  universe  a  world,  the  world  of  the  ether  and  its 
undulations;  it  has  broadened  our  conception  of  energy 

that  mathenia.tics  is  not  only  infallible  but  also  true  of  the  existent 
world  of  our  experience,  Kant  inferred  the  following  remarkable 
rationalistic  theory  of  reality.  All  the  mathematical  aspects  of  the 
world  are  the  product  of  the  mind  and  literally  depend  upon  the 
mind  for  their  existence.  Thus  space  and  time  and  all  those  aspects 
of  the  material  world  which  exemplify  the  principles  of  the  New- 
tonian mechanics  are  fundamental  mind-given  aspects,  or  forms  of 
experience.  That  is  to  say,  the  world  is  a  spatial,  temporal,  material 
and  mechanical  world  because  of  the  nature  of  the  mind  and  not 
independently  of  the  mind.  These  forms  of  our  intuition  and  under- 
standing make  our  world  the  sort  of  world  it  is  and  therefore  if  our 
mind  had  other  forms  the  world  would  be  mathematically  different 
or  even  non-mathematical.  Such  a  theory  seemed  thoroughly  sound 
in  1781  and  for  decades  afterward  and  seemed  so  to  many  of  the 
greatest  intellects.  To-day  it  does  not  seem  sound  to  the  mathema- 
tician, for  mathematics  is  not  an  existential  science.  A  world  of 
different  geometrical  characteristics  from  those  we  believe  to  be 
possessed  by  the  existent  world  is  mathematically  possible.  The  real 
world  is  thought  of  by  us  to  be  geometrically  EucUdean  and  three 
dimensional;  but  a  non-Euclidean  world  or  an  n-dimensional  world 
would  as  truly  exemplify  mathematical  theory.  In  other  words, 
mathematics  makes  no  assertions  whatever  regarding  what  exists  or 
what  does  not,  but  asserts  merely  the  consequences  of  certain  hy- 
potheses, it  may  be  at  one  time  the  consequences  of  one  hypothesis 
and  at  another  time  the  consequences  of  the  contradictory  hypothe- 
sis, leaving  the  question  quite  open  which  of  these  hypotheses  is  true 
of  the  existing  world  or  even  if  either  is  true  of  this  world.  In  short, 
one  of  the  greatest  bulwarks  of  rationalistic  theories  of  reality  has 
been  destroyed  by  this  remarkable  philosophical  discovery  within 
mathematics. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         393 

and  has  reformulated  the  older  principle  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  motion  into  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of 
energy;  and  it  has  raised  a  philosophical  difficulty  of  pro- 
found theoretical  importance,  the  irreversibility  of  nature's 
processes. 

During  the  last  two  decades,  discoveries  have  been 
made  of  even  greater  assistance  to  an  insight  into  the 
nature  of  the  physical  world.  Indeed,  it  has  been  said 
that  during  these  few  years  man  has  learned  more  regard- 
ing the  nature  of  matter  than  he  had  in  all  the  past  of  his 
history.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  discoveries  resulting 
from  investigating  radioactivity.  The  electron  hypothesis 
promises  to  bridge  the  gap  between  the  ether  and  the  world 
of  matter  and  between  the  world  of  physics  and  that  of 
chemistry.  Some  day  it  may  even  make  the  chemical 
elements  and  their  properties  deducible  from  the  logically 
prior  physical  science.  Before  these  discoveries  the  uni- 
verse of  mechanics  and  the  universe  of  chemistry  were 
so  distant  that  the  gap  between  them  formed  a  serious 
philosophical  embarrassment.  Of  course,  the  belief  was 
entertained  that  some  day  mechanics  might  account  for 
the  chemical,  but  there  was  little  to  justify  the  belief. 
Now,  however,  we  may  reasonably  hope  that  science  will 
in  time  find  all  the  bridges  necessary  to  pass  from  the 
ethereal  disturbances,  light,  heat,  electricity  and  magnet- 
ism without  logical  break  to  chemistry.  If  this  hope  is  in 
fact  realized,  it  will  be  one  of  the  greatest  philosophical 
triumphs,  if  not  the  greatest  philosophical  triumph  of 
the  intellect  of  man. 

Within  chemistry  itself  have  been  made  many  discov- 
eries of  great  philosophical  importance;  ^  but  it  is  quite 

1  Prominent  among  these  discoveries  that  tend  to  make  chemistry 
deductive  are  the  great  advances  in  physical  chemistry,  e.  g.,  the 
theory  of  gases  and  of  solution,  of  osmosis  and  of  ionization,  the  dis- 
coveries that  collectively  make  up  stereo-chemistry  and  such  dis- 


394      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

beyond  the  scope  of  this  chapter  even  to  summarize  them. 
If  we  mean  by  the  philosophical  progress  of  a  science  its  move- 
ment toward  being  a  purely  deductive  science,  then  chem- 
istry has  made  marked  philosophical  progress  during  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  especially  during  the  past  sixty  years, 
far  as  it  still  is  from  being  actually  a  deductive  science. 

The  progress  in  biochemistry  has  been  peculiarly  of 
philosophical  importance  because  the  chasm  between  the 
inorganic  and  the  living  is  wide  and  unbridged.  However, 
the  bridge  is  certainly  under  construction  whether  or  not 
it  will  ever  be  completed.  From  both  sides  of  the  chasm 
the  scientists  of  the  past  fifty  years  have  been  approaching 
one  another.  On  the  one  side,  physical  and  organic 
chemists  have  little  by  little  learned  to  do  in  their  labora- 
tories a  few  of  the  things  that  the  living  cells  of  animals 
and  plants  do.  True,  they  do  these  things  usually  by  dif- 
ferent methods,  but  the  methods  used  by  the  living  are 
in  part  understood.  For  example,  the  discovery  of  osmosis 
and  the  presence  and  function  of  enzymes  uncover  many 
old  mysteries.  On  the  other  side,  the  physiologist  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  of  a  chemist,  and  he  is  becoming 
one  because  he  is  finding  more  and  more  chemistry  in  the 
doings  of  hving  cells  and  because  chemistry  is  helping  him 
explain  many  of  the  facts  he  encounters.  For  example, 
the  characteristic  phenomena  of  the  living  cell  and  of  its 
division,  the  action  of  toxins,  the  secretion  of  glands  and 
the  effects  of  internal  secretions  and  the  interaction  of 
cells  in  the  multicellular  organism  are  noticeably  becoming 
more  and  more  physico-chemical  problems.  All  of  which 
does  not  prove  that  the  bridge  between  chemistry  and 
physiology  will  ever  be  completed,  but  it  does  indicate 
the  marked  progress  of  bio-chemical  research  toward  this 
end  during  the  recent  decades. 

coveries  as  the  periodic  law  of  Mendeleeff,  valency,  and  the  methods 
of  building  up  synthetically  organic  compounds. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         395 

Moreover,  another  important  bridge  is  building  between 
the  hving  cell  and  the  simplest  organic  compounds.  We 
may  call  it  an  evolutionary  bridge.  The  vast  distance  in 
terms  of  evolution  between  a  bacterium  and  a  relatively 
simple  organic  molecule  was  not  fully  appreciated  a  few 
decades  ago.  In  recent  decades,  however,  the  study  of  the 
cell  has  made  the  scientist  perceive  what  an  extremely 
complex  chemical-physical  machine  it  must  be  and  what 
an  enormous  distance  had  to  be  traversed  by  evolution 
in  passing  from  inorganic  matter  to  a  bacterium,  a  longer 
distance  probably  than  from  the  unicellular  organisms  to 
man.  Evidently  if  there  has  been  such  an  evolution  it  is  a 
matter  of  prime  philosophical  importance  to  verify  this 
and  to  discover  intervening  links  in  the  evolutionary 
chain.  Two  centuries  ago  the  discovery  of  the  unicellular 
organisms  themselves  was  a  discovery  of  precisely  such  an 
important  link  between  the  familiar  animals  and  plants 
and  the  lifeless  world,  a  discovery  that  may  without 
exaggerating  be  called  the  discovery  of  a  world,  the  vast 
world  of  primitive  life.  In  these  days  the  organic  chemist 
is  discovering  another  such  vast  world,  this  world  lying 
between  the  living  cell  and  the  simpler  organic  molecules. 
Perhaps  it  may  be  called  the  land  of  molecular  chains. 
That  is  to  say,  in  such  a  discovery  as  that  of  the  colloids 
biochemistry  and  organic  chemistry  are  literally  discover- 
ing a  world  with  an  enormous  population  but  a  world 
heretofore  completely  hidden  from  our  view  as  the  world 
of  primitive  life  was  hidden  before  the  microscope.  If 
only  we  can  come  to  know  this  world  well,  the  evolution- 
ary gap  between  the  living  cell  and  the  simple  organic 
molecule  may  indeed  be  bridged  by  a  chain  of  intervening 
forms,  and  thus  another  serious  philosophical  embarrass- 
ment may  be  forever  removed. 

Within  general  physiology  also  there  has  been  decided 
philosophical  progress  even  since  the  days  of  Darwin. 


396      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

As  one  biologist  has  expressed  this  advance,  "Darwin 
seems  almost  as  far  away  as  does  Democritus."  Physiol- 
ogy has  been  shifting  from  a  science  of  the  gross  organism 
to  a  science  of  the  processes  within  and  about  the  living 
cells.  Thus  in  these  latter  decades  the  discovery  of  the 
cellular  structure  of  the  living  organism  made  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  has  become  for  biology  what  Dalton's 
doctrine  of  atomism  has  long  been  for  chemistry.  That 
discovery  predestined  the  science  to  become  an  atomic 
theory,  and  this  it  has  since  literally  become.  Moreover, 
the  very  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  the  forms  of  life  has 
become  a  problem  of  the  evolution  of  atomic  entities;  for 
the  study  of  the  mechanics  of  heredity  has  opened  to  our 
view  another  atomism  in  the  Mendelian  and  other  factors 
present  in  the  germ-plasm  which  determine  the  adult  or 
mature  form.  Thus  to-day  the  evolutionary  problem  has 
been  shifted  from  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  adult 
forms  to  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  germ-plasm  these 
adult  forms  carry,  and  of  the  origin  of  the  heredity  factors 
this  germ-plasm  contains. 

The  study  of  behavior,  or  of  mental  life  also  has  made 
great  philosophical  strides  forward.  Not  only  has  this 
study  become  experimental  and  genuinely  inductive; 
but  discoveries  have  been  made  of  truly  philosophical 
importance.  The  science  has  tended  to  expand  into  a 
general  science  of  behavior  and  not  to  remain  merely  a 
science  of  the  human  mind;  that  is  to  say,  the  science  of 
the  human  mind  is  not  sui  generis  but  is  an  arbitrary  sec- 
tion of  the  general  science  of  behavior.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  same  general  evolutionary  continuity  is  being  dis- 
covered between  the  behavior  of  the  simpler  organism  and 
the  behavior  of  man  as  Darwin  discovered  in  their  mor- 
phology. On  the  other  hand,  the  same  general  approach 
toward  an  atomic  theory  is  evident  in  psychology  as  in 
physiology.    The  conduct  of  the  more  complex  organisms 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         397 

is  in  part  built  out  of  the  conduct  of  the  less  complex 
organisms  of  the  same  evolutionary  line;  and  the  chief 
addition  besides  new  atoms  of  behavior  is  the  further 
organization  of  these  older  atomic  forms  of  behavior  into 
more  complex  or  more  highly  integrated  systems.  For 
example,  already  in  the  behavior  of  the  common  garden 
worm  is  to  be  seen  the  prophecy  of  behavior  as  complex 
as  that  of  man. 

Finally,  we  come  to  the  science  of  man  and  society  and 
to  the  science  of  the  origin  of  man's  customs,  tools,  arts 
and  institutions.  Here  likewise  the  same  story  is  to  be 
told  of  important  philosophical  discoveries  during  the 
past  fifty  years.  The  discovery  of  the  customs,  tools  and 
arts  of  primitive  man  is  making  ever  clearer  the  evolution 
of  human  civilization.  The  study  of  primitive  societies 
is  doing  a  similar  work  for  the  historian  of  society.  Again, 
man,  the  atom  of  social  evolution,  is  better  understood; 
and  hence  it  is  possible  to  explain  more  of  human  history 
than  ever  before.  The  gap  between  man  and  his  anthro- 
poidal  ancestor  is  being  bridged  by  the  discovery  of  inter- 
vening types  of  men  and  intervening  types  of  culture. 
In  general,  this  extensive  field  of  research  exhibits  the 
same  philosophical  approach,  as  do  the  biological  sciences, 
toward  atomism  and  evolutionary  continuity. 

For  further  and  for  more  extensive  study  read: 

(For  mathematics),  Young,  J.  W.,  Lectures  on  the  Funda- 
mental Concepts  of  Algebra  and  Geometry,  1911. 

(For  physical  science)  Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philoso- 
phy, Vol.  II,  493-498; 

Mach,  E.  (transl.  McCormack),  Popular  Scientific  Lectures, 
137-185; 

Nunn,  T.  P.,  Animism  and  the  Doctrine  of  Energy,  Proc. 
of  Aristotelian  Soc.  N.  S.  12,  1912; 

Duncan,  R.  K.,  The  New  Knowledge,  1910; 

Whetham,  Recent  Development  of  Physical  Science. 


398      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

(For  biochemistry)  Moore,  Origin  and  Nature  of  Life  (Home 

University  Library); 
Noel  Paton,  D.,  A  Physiologist's  View  of  Life  and  Mind, 

Hibbert  Journal,  1915, 13. 
(For  physiology)  Darwin  and  Modern  Science,  1909. 
(For  psychology)  Watson,  J.  B.,  Behavior,  An  Introduction 

to  Comparative  Psychology,  1914. 
(For  anthropology)  Marett,  R.  R.,  Anthropology  (Home 

University  Library). 

4.  Naturalism. — The  two  preceding  sections  have 
briefly  indicated  the  remarkable  triumph  of  naturalism 
in  the  past  one  hundred  years.  If  the  thinkers  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  were  justified  in 
setting  aside  magic  and  animism  as  inadequate  hypotheses, 
certainly  the  thinker  of  to-day  has  a  thousand  times  as 
much  evidence  to  justify  him  in  so  doing.  But  intellec- 
tual history  is  not  a  mere  growth  in  the  amount  of  evidence 
collected  for  or  against  this  or  that  hypothesis.  New 
information  often  reveals  the  hidden  complexity  of  the 
old  problem,  unseen  when  the  problem  was  first  raised; 
and  therefore  its  effect  is  often  to  lessen  confidence.  How- 
ever, naturalism  has  grown  greatly  in  strength  and  in 
the  number  of  its  disciples.  The  intellectual  classes  and 
the  general  public  have  never  before  been  as  naturalistic 
as  they  are  to-day.  In  the  main  the  bitter  controversies 
against  naturalistic  science  are  over  and  naturalism  has 
won  the  fight.  From  star  dust  to  man  and  society, 
from  celestial  mechanics  to  psychology  and  sociology  our 
sciences  study  the  problems  raised  in  a  naturalistic  way 
and  in  this  way  as  a  matter  of  course.  Some  of  the  great 
gaps  in  the  evidence  justifying  the  naturalistic  conception 
of  the  world  are  now  at  least  partly  filled.  Such  gaps  we 
have  seen  to  be  the  gap  between  the  prechemical  matter 
and  the  chemical  elements  and  molecules,  the  gap  between 
the  world  of  inorganic  chemistry  and  the  world  of  living 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         399 

organisms,  the  gap  between  unicellular  life  and  man,  and 
the  gaps  between  the  rude  culture  and  society  of  the  pre- 
historic man  and  the  religion,  art,  science,  industry,  gov- 
ernment, language,  and  in  general  the  civilization  of  the 
present  European  peoples.  Thus  the  evolutionary  hypoth- 
esis so  essential  to  naturalism  is  firmly  fixed  in  our  intellec- 
tual habits.  Again,  the  possibility  of  science  explaining 
deductively  the  complex  out  of  the  relatively  simple,  the 
chemical  out  of  the  prechemical,  the  vital  out  of  the 
chemical,  the  mental  out  of  the  vital,  and  the  social  out 
of  the  mental,  seems  more  than  ever  justified  as  an  hy- 
pothesis and  as  a  plan  and  ideal  goal  of  research.  Indeed, 
never  have  supernatural  and  animistic  hypotheses  been 
less  in  evidence  than  they  are  in  the  contemporary  trea- 
tises of  science  or  in  the  discussions  of  the  learned  world. 

Yet  at  the  same  time  the  older  mechanistic  naturalism 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  seems  to 
thoughtful  men  to-day  altogether  too  simple.  This  older 
naturahsm  was  based  solely,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  the 
gravitational  astronomy  and  the  mathematical  science 
of  mechanics,  which  implies  that  it  was  based  upon  but 
a  very  small  part  of  modern  science  as  it  now  obtains. 
Hence,  if  we  are  to-day  naturalists,  we  are  naturalists  fac- 
ing a  world  indefinitely  more  complex  than  the  one  appre- 
hended by  the  scientist  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
we  are  naturalists  far  from  being  convinced  that  the  New- 
tonian mechanics  is  to  be  in  the  long  run  the  fundamental 
physical  science,  we  are  naturalists  far  from  being  confi- 
dent that  the  profound  gaps  between  the  various  strata 
of  reality  can  ever  be  bridged  completely,  and  we  are  nat- 
uralists who  are  skeptical  in  our  present  ignorance  toward 
all  attempts  to  deduce  the  nature  of  reality  by  taking  the 
results  of  one  science  and  making  them  the  premises  of  a 
universal  science. 

This  skepticism  can  be  best  illustrated  by  the  actual 


400      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

revival  in  our  time  of  vitalism  and  animism.  To  some 
thinkers  the  gap  between  the  physical-chemical  world 
and  that  of  life  and  the  gap  between  the  physiological  and 
the  mental  seem  quite  unbridgeable.  In  short,  vitalism 
and  animism  have  reappeared  in  the  scientific  world  itself. 
That  is  to  say,  life  and  mind  are  thought  by  some  scien- 
tists to  be  radically  distinct  respectively  from  the  chemical 
and  from  the  physiological;  for  remarkable  as  are  admitted 
to  be  the  triumphs  of  biochemistry  and  neural  physiology, 
these  achievements  do  not  explain  the  facts  that  are  pecu- 
liarly vital  or  mental.  According  to  the  vitalist,  life  has 
an  irreducible  teleological  property  which  chemistry  in  no 
way  explains;  for  life  adapts  itself  to  the  future  and  in 
this  sense  exhibits  purpose,  whereas  chemistry  is  as  un- 
able to  explain  purpose  as  it  is  to  judge  of  the  beauty  of 
a  painting.  According  to  the  animist,  the  higher  types  of 
mind  exhibit  memory  and  personality  which  make  any 
atomic  theory  whatsoever  inadequate,  and  therefore  they 
cannot  be  explained  by  discovering  the  way  in  which  neu- 
rons are  organized,  or  integrated.  Hence  these  thinkers 
maintain  that  to  explain  life  and  mind  we  must  assume  a 
vital  principle  or  entity  over  and  above  the  chemical 
molecules  and  their  compounds  and  a  soul  over  and  above 
the  mental  as  explained  by  the  laws  of  inborn  and  acquired 
neural  connections.  These  thinkers,  the  neo-vitalists  and 
the  neo-animists,  though  many  in  number  remain  relatively 
a  small  party.  In  general,  the  scientific  world  seems 
disposed  to  keep  to  its  naturalistic  working  hypotheses 
and  naturalistic  spirit  of  research.^ 

1  Besides  the  neo-vitalists  and  the  neo-animists,  there  is  a  third 
group  of  physiologists  who  doubt  the  ability  of  science  to  discover 
complete  logical  continuity  between  the  relatively  simple  and  the 
relatively  complex  strata  of  reality.  They  maintain  that  there  ia 
danger  in  trying  to  simplify  the  complex  and  to  deal  with  the  con- 
crete in  terms  of  high  abstractions.  The  complex  and  the  concrete 
are  the  real;  and  the  abstract  sciences  such  as  physics  and  chemistry 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         401 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Driesch,  H.  (transl.  Ogden),  History  and  Theory  of  Vitalism, 
1914; 

Haldane,  J.  S.,  Mechanism,  Life  and  Personality,  1914; 

Moore,  Origin  and  Nature  of  Life  (Home  University  Li- 
brary) ; 

McDougall,  W.,  Body  and  Mind. 

5.  Rationalism  and  experimentalism. — During  the 
past  fifty  years  the  trend  away  from  rationalism  and  to- 
ward experimentaUsm  has  been  marked.  Though  ration- 
alism is  still  frequently  to  be  found,  remarkably  little 
remains  of  the  confidence,  so  prominent  in  the  think- 
ers of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  that 
mere  thought  can  discover  and  verify  vast  existential 
hypotheses  and  that  man's  mind  has  in  it  the  powers  to 
elaborate  independently  of  experience  either  what  does 
exist  or  what  should  exist.  In  the  intervening  period 
thoughtful  men  have  seen  such  theories  end  so  often  in 
failure,  and  have  learned  so  much  better  the  nature  of 
human  discovery  that  they  expect  mere  reasoning  to  be 
usually  in  the  wrong.  They  have  seen  the  simple  problems 
of  speculation  prove  so  often  to  be  the  extremely  complex 
problems  of  fact,  and  they  have  beheld  the  few  problems 
of  an  earlier  stage  of  a  science  develop  into  the  numerous 
problems  of  a  later  stage;  that  they  are  well  aware  that  the 
work  of  science  is  never  done  and  therefore  they  expect 
their  conclusions  and  hypotheses  to  be  soon  outgrown 
through  the  work  of  the  next  generation  of  investigators. 

are  inadequate  to  deal  with  the  total  nature  of  the  real,  for  no  matter 
how  successful  these  sciences  are,  they  always  leave  a  residue  un- 
explained, or  they  behe  by  their  very  simplicity  the  richness  of  the 
real.  However,  this  protest  against  oversimplification  on  the  part 
of  science  does  not  mean  that  these  thinkers  in  any  way  question  the 
results  of  science  or  are  hostile  to  the  naturalistic  program  of  re- 
search. Rather,  it  means,  that  they  believe  physical  science  as  a 
world  conception  to  be  inadequate. 


402      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

To  be  ignorant  is  one  thing  but  to  be  aware  of  that 
ignorance,  to  be  conscious  that  theories  are  tentative,  to 
admit  that  experiment  must  take  the  place  of  mere  deduc- 
tion, these  are  different  things.  To  hold  therefore  to  theo- 
ries loosely,  to  expect  to  see  them  outgrown,  to  be  con- 
scious how  utterly  unverified  our  fondest  deductions  often 
remain,  to  see  that  we  have  got  them  in  the  only  way 
available  in  our  ignorance  but  in  a  way  that  makes  them 
doubtful,  and  to  strive  to  substitute  for  mere  logic  the 
appeal  to  facts,  to  exhibit  such  traits  is  to  give  evidence  of 
a  new  philosophy,  is  to  outgrow  rationalism  and  to  become 
experimentaHsts.  This  change  of  spirit  is  evident  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  science  and  indeed  of  the 
intellectual  life  of  our  time.  It  has  come  slowly  for  it  was 
exhibited  as  a  genuine  philosophic  trait  in  Galilei  long 
ago  but  now  it  has  made  its  way  until  it  can  be  truly  called 
an  important  part  of  the  spirit  of  the  age.  In  contrast, 
think  of  the  isms  and  the  ologies  of  the  past  two  hundred 
years,  in  science,  in  religion  and  morals,  in  politics  and 
economic  policy,  in  dealing  with  the  criminal  and  the 
pauper,  in  educating  children,  and  in  caring  for  the  sick! 

6.  Intellectualism  and  pragmatism. — The  pendulum 
that  we  see  thus  swinging  can  swing  even  farther,  as  recent 
philosophic  thought  proves.  Science  must  become  not 
merely  experimental  but  also  practical.  By  science  being 
practical  two  doctrines  are  implied.  First,  the  entire 
intellectual  career  of  man  is  merely  a  part  of  his  hfe  and 
shares  with  his  other  behavior  its  general  biological  char- 
acter, which  is  adjustment  to  internal  and  environmental 
conditions.  That  is  to  say,  when  we  know,  we  are  behav- 
ing as  truly  as  when  we  eat,  we  are  as  organisms  adjusting 
our  responses  to  conditions  and  fulfilling  life's  needs.  The 
man  seeking  his  escape  from  a  forest  is  as  truly  an  organ- 
ism responding  to  a  biological  need  as  is  a  hungry  man 
eating.    The  child  in  school  endeavoring  to  work  out  its 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         403 

arithmetical  problems  is  an  organism  face  to  face  with  an 
environmental  embarrassment  that  it  must  meet  and  to 
which  it  as  an  organism  has  certain  instinctive  and  ac- 
quired ways  of  responding,  precisely  as  is  a  cat  caught  in 
a  trap.  In  short,  man  in  his  entire  intellectual  enterprise, 
be  the  particular  task  in  the  chemical  laboratory,  the 
mathematician's  study,  the  counting  room,  or  the  car- 
penter shop,  is  likewise  but  responding  as  an  organism 
to  the  needs  and  environmental  conditions  which  form 
the  total  situation  of  the  moment.  If  then  the  work  of  the 
intellect  is  response  as  truly  as  is  the  work  of  the  arms  or 
legs,  it  follows  that  science  cannot  be  correctly  understood 
and  interpreted  until  we  regard  it  as  a  form  of  human  re- 
sponse. In  other  words,  science  is  not  understood,  if  we 
regard  it,  as  did  the  older  philosophers,  as  an  ideal  contem- 
plation of  a  passing  panorama,  or  as  the  discovery  of  a 
real  world  unrelated  to  man's  biological  nature  and  made 
an  object  of  study  by  a  curiosity  that  is  biologically 
superhuman.  Rather  science  is  of  the  earth,  earthy;  it 
is  the  product  of  human  toil;  and  its  authorship  is  as 
human  as  is  that  of  a  coat  or  a  house.  Therefore  divorced 
from  human  life  and  studied  in  abstrado  it  is  nothing 
whatever,  nothing  more  than  the  grin  of  Alice's  Cheshire 
cat  with  the  cat  gone. 

Moreover,  consider  the  notion  of  reality  of  the  intellec- 
tualistic  philosopher;  for  this  too  is  the  abiding  grin  of  the 
absent  cat.  Reality  is  for  man  a  biological  notion.  It 
means  nothing  unless  expressed  in  terms  of  human  be- 
havior. It  means  conditions  man  must  meet  to  live  and 
thrive,  it  means  instruments  man  must  use  to  gain  his 
ends,  it  means  the  world  of  human  ambition,  the  world 
responded  to  ultimately  by  the  instinctive  nature  of  man. 
Man  has  no  more  a  naked  curiosity  or  a  universal  curiosity 
than  has  a  spider  an  instinct  to  weave  all  possible  types 
of  webs,  or  to  weave  webs  merely  for  the  sake  of  giving 


404      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

entomologists  something  to  study.  The  real  world  for 
man  is  human  in  the  same  sense  as  man's  bill  of  fare  is 
human  or  man's  way  of  walking  is  human.  Superhuman 
reality  is  an  empty  abstraction.  For  example,  if  man 
never  had  a  disease,  a  broken  bone  or  an  abnormal  growth, 
what  would  the  science  of  medicine  be,  how  would  such  a 
science  have  ever  arisen,  by  what  possible  means  could 
there  be  either  a  debate  about  or  a  test  of  medical  theory? 
It  would  all  be  as  meaningless  as  a  drama  written  to  play 
before  the  walls  of  the  house  as  the  audience,  or  as  a  ma- 
chine invented  to  do  nothing  in  particular. 

Therefore,  let  the  experimentalist  not  only  reject  ra- 
tionalism but  let  him  also  reject  intellectualism.  Let 
him  humanize  science,  see  in  it  man's  trial  and  error  and 
instinctive  responses.  Let  him  define  truth  and  reality 
in  terms  of  the  practical,  in  terms  of  the  successful  re- 
sponse, in  terms  of  man's  life  and  interests,  and  mean  by 
the  universe  the  field  of  human  response  and  interest. 
Let  him  see  in  the  scientist  precisely  what  he  has  long  ago 
seen  in  the  inventor  of  machines,  the  student  of  medicine, 
the  writer  of  dramas,  the  builder  of  houses,  the  farmer 
and  the  laborer. 

Second,  "science  being  practical"  implies  that  man 
should  avoid  abstract  science  divorced  from  concrete  prob- 
lems. That  is  to  say,  if  knowing  is  a  response;  it  is  a  re- 
sponse to  a  present  concrete  situation,  the  solution  of  actual 
human  problems  as  man  faces  those  problems.  It  is  noth- 
ing else  by  right.  If  made  anything  else  by  dreamers,  ra- 
tionaUsts  and  intellectualists,  it  is  as  vain  an  enterprise  as 
the  search  for  the  fountain  of  perpetual  youth  or  the  search 
for  the  holy  grail.  Man  does  not,  as  a  biological  entity, 
face  abstract  situations  or  situations  in  general;  he  faces 
always  concrete  and  present  situations.  For  example,  the 
physician  is  not  called  upon  to  cure  typhoid  fever  but 
this  man  sick  with  typhoid  fever;  therefore  unless  his 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         405 

science  teaches  him  to  meet  this  real  situation  and  not 
some  imaginary  general  and  abstract  situation  it  is  a  mere 
delusion.  In  general,  all  disputes  or  all  problems  that 
we  have  the  bad  habit  of  divorcing  from  the  forms  in 
which  they  are  met  in  concrete  situations,  should  be 
promptly  returned  to  their  concrete  setting  before  further 
discussion  or  further  research.  Be  a  concrete  chemist, 
or  a  concrete  mathematician,  or  a  concrete  physician. 
The  habit  of  wandering  into  pure  theory  divorced  from  the 
concrete  is  an  intellectual  vice.  Consider,  as  an  example, 
the  fine  old  debates  regarding  the  freedom  of  man's  will 
and  in  particular  regarding  what  a  donkey  would  do  mid- 
way between  two  bundles  of  hay.  How  utterly  idle! 
You  and  I  meet  human  responsibility  not  in  the  abstract 
but  in  the  concrete.  Our  actual  problems  are,  what  to  do 
with  this  insane  man,  with  this  drunkard,  with  this  feeble- 
minded child,  with  this  ambitious  and  intellectual  boy. 
Let  the  man  who  wishes  to  argue  with  you  whether  or  not 
the  human  will  is  free,  state  actual  concrete  instances  of 
human  conduct  and  state  precisely  what  he  would  mean 
in  the  given  instances  by  acts  of  free  will  and  then  if  neces- 
sary try  the  experiment  of  watching  the  actual  cases. 

Pragmatism,  as  this  reaction  against  intellectuahsm  is 
called,  is  a  distinct  and  growing  element  in  the  philosophic 
thought  of  the  past  fifty  years  and  is  a  natural  companion 
of  experimentalism.  During  this  time  it  has  made  its 
presence  felt  in  almost  every  department  of  western  in- 
tellectual life.  In  art  and  literature  it  makes  its  presence 
evident  in  a  rebellion  against  any  fixed  principles  such  as 
formalism  and  in  the  general  artistic  doctrine  that  the 
individual  should  throw  off  the  authority  of  tradition  and 
frankly  put  in  the  place  of  this  authority  his  own  Hkes  and 
disUkes.  That  is  to  say,  there  are  no  universal  principles 
of  the  artistic  and  the  beautiful,  but  rather  there  are  the 
concrete  tastes  of  the  individuals  that  make  up  the  in- 


406      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

terested  public.  For  example,  take  the  novel.  There  are 
no  principles  by  which  the  ideal  novel  can  be  defined  for 
all  time.  Rather  what  we  find  is  that  the  taste  of  one  day 
differs  from  the  taste  of  another  and  that  the  least  ex- 
pected taste  often  becomes  the  prevaihng  criterion.^ 

In  science  pragmatism  is  more  nearly  explicit.  In  such 
prominent  contemporary  men  of  science  as  Ernst  Mach, 
Ostwald,  Poincar^,  Karl  Pearson  and  many  others  we  find 
the  belief  asserted  that  science  has  been  largely  conven- 
tional and  accidental  in  its  use  or  selection  of  fundamental 
notions  and  postulates.  So-called  laws  of  nature  or  so- 
called  necessary  principles  are  no  more  such  than  a  loco- 
motive is  a  law  of  nature  or  an  intellectually  necessary 
instrument  of  hauling.  Such  laws  and  principles  survive 
for  much  the  same  reasons  that  the  locomotive  survives, 
or  the  EngUsh  language  survives;  that  is,  because  they 
fill  a  certain  office  more  satisfactorily  than  does  any  rival 
instrument  or  invention.  In  abstrado  they  have  no  im- 
portance or  validity  whatsoever.  What  importance  they 
have,  is  derived  from  the  fact  that  they  solve  our  problems 
or  do  so  more  conveniently  than  do  rival  devices.  The 
only  matter  of  ultimate  importance  is  the  concrete  prob- 
lem actually  facing  the  human  intellect  together  with 
the  need,  desire  or  curiosity  impelling  man  to  eliminate 
the  problem  by  solving  it  in  the  psychologically  easiest 
way.  The  resulting  solution  satisfies  the  immediate  need 
and  therefore  passes  for  the  present;  but  another  genera- 
tion may  become  dissatisfied  with  the  solution  and  seek 

1  The  intellectualist  may  define  the  true  goal  of  the  novel:  First 
comes  the  plot  that  tells  a  story  that  is  impossible,  then  one  that  tells 
the  improbable  and  next  one  that  tells  a  story  that  is  probable  and 
finally  as  the  ultimate  of  plot  development  comes  the  novel  which 
tells  the  inevitable.  But  in  the  midst  of  this  development  comes  a 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  with  his  romantic  and  improbable  tales, 
wins  the  world's  approval  and  defies  successfully  the  rules  laid  down 
by  the  intellectualistic  literary  critic. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         407 

a  new  one.  Thus  science  is  ever  changing  her  solutions, 
her  fundamental  notions  and  postulates  to  suit  the  imme- 
diate and  therefore  temporary  need.  The  entire  system 
of  scientific  theory  is  relative  to  the  practical  exigencies 
of  the  hour  and  never  attains  some  absolute  or  fixed  goal 
called  by  the  intellectualist  the  truth. 

Other  places  in  which  pragmatism  is  nowadays  espe- 
cially noticeable  are  in  moral  theory,  jurisprudence, 
politics,  and  educational  theory.  Probably  no  age  has  had 
less  definitely  an  explicit  moral  code  than  our  own,  or 
less  confidence  in  the  finality  of  such  a  code;  and  yet  we 
are  morally  superior,  there  are  good  reasons  to  believe, 
to  any  preceding  age  in  such  general  traits  as  humaneness, 
socialization,  antagonism  to  privilege,  and  self-restraint. 
In  other  words,  our  morality  seems  to  be  less  a  general 
theory  and  more  an  array  of  solutions  of  concrete  moral 
problems.  The  same  is  true,  if  I  mistake  not,  of  our  po- 
litical life  and  practice.  Party  politics  are  remarkably 
deficient  in  abstract  principles  and  correspondingly  rich 
in  platforms  offering  solutions  of  special  pressing  social 
and  political  problems.  So  much  so  is  this  the  case  that 
the  strict  party  man  is  often  puzzled  what  principle  his 
party  does  stand  for.  For  example,  the  liberal  party  of 
England  is  remarkably  different  from  the  same  party 
fifty  years  ago,  moving  from  its  old  individualism  toward 
socialism,  as  Mr.  Hobhouse  explains  in  his  book  on  Lib- 
eralism, under  the  pressure  of  concrete  special  political 
and  social  problems.  How  utterly  naive  Herbert  Spencer 
seems  to-day  to  the  English  liberal!  Furthermore  in  both 
moral  and  political  theory  aside  from  general  practice 
pragmatism  is  showing  itself  even  more  openly.  There  is 
a  distinct  distrust  of  "the  simple  solution  of  complex 
problems."  Even  socialistic  Uterature  is  becoming  more 
lenient  in  its  demands  for  all  or  none;  and  is  distinctly 
less  Utopian.    The  motto  "sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the 


408      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

evil  thereof"  implicit  in  this  branch  of  theory  indicates, 
if  I  mistake  not,  a  growing  sense  of  the  immense  com- 
plexity of  human  life  and  a  corresponding  distrust  of 
general  theory;  it  seems  to  brand  moral  codes  and  general 
political  theories  as  absurdly  naive.  In  jurisprudence 
there  is  again,  if  I  am  not  misled,  a  growing  restlessness 
toward  the  intellectualistic  system  of  the  traditional  law. 
On  the  one  hand  is  a  manufacture  of  statutes  too  fast 
for  the  jurist  to  keep  up  the  pace,  with  a  hidden  but  proba- 
bly rapid  change  of  legal  principle.  On  the  other  hand, 
is  a  restlessness  against  the  academic  legal  tradition  and 
against  the  academic  jurist  evident  not  merely  among  the 
public  but  in  the  law  schools.  There  is  movement  away 
from  what  is  left  of  the  doctrine  of  the  natural  rights  of 
man  and  toward  the  doctrine  that  society  has  to  solve  as 
best  it  can  the  concrete  legal  problems  which  it  actually 
faces;  and  there  seems  to  be  a  growing  sense  that  the  true 
maker  of  legal  history  is  and  always  has  been  the  practical 
need  of  the  time,  that  law  is  not  some  universally  valid 
system  alike  for  all  ages,  climes  and  nations,  but  that  it 
is  the  outcome  of  the  struggle  in  each  environment  to  meet 
the  pressing  practical  problem  forced  upon  society.  Fi- 
nally, in  education  a  marked  rebelUon  is  evident  against 
the  merely  academic  curriculum.  Learning  for  its  own 
sake  is  disappearing.  Learning  for  the  sake  of  the  particu- 
lar station  in  life  the  pupil  is  to  occupy  and  teaching  so 
that  what  is  taught  may  be  used,  are  distinctly  character- 
istic of  the  great  changes  brought  to  pass  in  the  schools  of 
Europe  and  America  in  recent  decades.  Consider  the 
developing  and  multiplying  of  technical  schools,  the  strug- 
gle against  the  older  traditional  classical  and  philosophical 
curriculum  and  the  entrance  of  utilitarian  subjects  into 
most  curricula.  Even  in  reUgion,  less  is  thought  to-day 
than  ever  before  in  modern  times  about  abstract  theology 
and  differences  in  creed  and  more  is  thought  about  con- 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         409 

Crete  piety,  concrete  holiness  and  individual  consecration 
to  noble  causes.  If  I  mistake  not,  never  before  in  the  his- 
tory of  man  have  thoughtful  men  been  the  pragmatists 
they  are  to-day  and  never  before  have  they  held  prag- 
matism as  a  genuinely  explicit  philosophy  to  the  degree 
they  do  in  our  times. 

For  further  study  read: 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  art.  Pragmatism,  Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.; 

and  "Axioms  and  Postulates"  in  Personal  Idealism  (ed, 

by  Sturt),  1902; 
James,  W.,  Pragmatism,  1907; 
Moore,  A.  W.,  Pragmatism  and  Its  Critics,  1910. 
For  more  extensive  stvdy  read: 

James,  W.,  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  1909; 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  Himianism,  1903;  Studies  in  Humanism, 

1907;  Plato  or  Protagoras?,  1908; 
Bawden,  H.  H.,  The  Principles  of  Pragmatism,  1910; 
Dewey,  J.,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  1910; 
Dewey,  J.  and  E.,  Schools  of  To-morrow,  1915; 
Dewey  and  others,  Creative  Intelligence,  1917; 
Mach,   E.    (transl.   McCormack),   Science  of   Mechanics, 

chapter  IV,  section  IV; 
Mach,  E.  (transl.  McCormack),  Popular  Scientific  Lectures, 

186-235; 
Poincar^,  H.,  The  Foundations  of  Science,  The  Science 

Press,  1913. 

7.  The  new  realism. — To  the  question :  To  what  extent 
is  recent  and  present  philosophic  thought  subjectivistic? 
no  precise  answer  can  be  given.  However,  it  can  be  said 
that  most  thoughtful  men  are  Cartesian  dualists.  If  as 
such  they  face  squarely  the  problem  of  phenomenalism 
they  divide  into  three  groups:  first,  those  who  with  Des- 
cartes beUeve  that  science  can  infer  the  nature  of  the  phys- 
ical, or  non-mental  world;  second,  the  agnostic  phenome- 
nalists  who  believe  that  science  can  tell  us  nothing  about  a 


410      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

world  beyond  the  world  actually  perceived  by  our  senses; 
and  third,  the  idealists  who  have  so  far  outgrown  their 
Cartesianism  as  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  world  transcend- 
ing experience  and  who  therefore  deny  dualism  and  the 
cogency  of  its  phenomenalistic  problem.  The  first  of  these 
groups  which  we  may  call  Cartesian  phenomenalists,  is 
not  only  by  far  the  largest  but  the  most  truly  representa- 
tive group  among  philosophical  men  of  science.  The 
second  of  these  groups  has  many  members  and,  among 
these,  thinkers  whose  names  are  known  the  intellectual 
world  over.  The  third  group  which  includes  the  followers 
of  Berkeley,  the  so-called  subjective  idealists,  and  the 
followers  of  the  early  German  idealists,  the  so-called  ob- 
jective idealists,  is  the  smallest  of  these  groups  of  Carte- 
sians, but  has  among  its  members  also  men  recognized 
as  great  contemporary  thinkers.  Finally,  besides  these 
three  groups  of  Cartesians  there  is  a  still  smaller  group  of 
thinkers  who  beHeve  that  we  must  go  back  beyond  Des- 
cartes and  beyond  the  Greeks  and  study  again  the  whole 
problem  of  the  mental  and  of  the  relation  of  the  knowing 
mind  to  its  object.  These  thinkers  are  called  neo-realists.^ 
At  least  two  lines  of  argument  are  followed  in  the 
thought  of  these  realists  in  their  protest  against  the  tra- 
ditional way  of  conceiving  the  mental.  First,  Cartesian 
dualism  has  been  thought  through  during  the  past  three 
hundred  years  and  has  been  shown  to  end  in  absurdity.  Sec- 
ond, this  ancient  dualism  and  its  conception  of  the  mental 
has  come  to  the  modern  thinker  from  the  ancient  world  and 

1  The  movement  is  so  young  and  so  untried  by  the  test  of  history 
that  I  hesitate  to  give  it  a  place  in  a  brief  and  general  account  of 
contemporary  philosophic  thought.  However,  since  the  problem  is 
philosophically  so  important  and  the  difficulties  of  Cartesianism  are 
so  keenly  felt,  and  since  the  very  foundations  of  one  of  the  most 
important  general  sciences,  namely  psychology,  are  in  question,  the 
issue  deserves  a  place  even  in  our  brief  account  of  contemporary 
thought. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         411 

is  not  based  upon  an  open-minded  study  of  the  facts  in  the 
light  of  modern  science.  This  older  conception  of  the  men- 
tal presupposes  the  notions  of  substance  and  cause  as  these 
notions  were  used  in  Greek  thought;  whereas  modern 
science  has  been  outgrowing  both  notions.  Therefore,  if 
a  new  way  of  conceiving  the  mental  is  to  be  thought  out 
on  the  basis  of  modern  science,  it  must  be  done  in  terms 
of  the  fundamental  notions  of  modern  as  opposed  to 
ancient  science.  Let  us  examine  in  order  each  of  these 
lines  of  argument. 

The  neo-realist  believes  that  Cartesian  dualism  and  its 
resulting  subjectivism  have  been  tried  by  history  and  have 
been  reduced  to  absurdity.  In  the  first  place,  dualism 
leads  directly  either  to  the  absurdity  of  agnosticism  or  to 
the  absurdity  of  parallelism.  If  you  grant  the  dualism  of 
the  typical  Cartesian,  some  of  the  keenest  thinkers  of 
the  past  two  hundred  years  show  you  that  the  non-mental 
world  and  the  world  of  our  experience,  the  world  of  sen- 
sation, are  separated  by  an  impassable  gulf.  The  objects 
that  we  can  observe  are  by  hypothesis  mental  and  the 
mind  is  quite  without  any  logical  or  scientific  postulate 
that  will  enable  us  to  deduce  from  these  mental  contents 
a  world  which  by  hypothesis  quite  transcends  these  con- 
tents. Thus  you  are  left  with  the  doctrine  that  you  can 
know  the  world  of  possible  experience  but  that  the  other 
world,  the  non-mental  world  postulated  in  your  original 
hypothesis,  is  completely  unknowable.  The  reaUst  asks: 
How  can  you  then  fail  to  suspect  the  original  hypothesis? 
But,  let  us  assume  with  other  Cartesians  that  the  world 
of  mind  and  matter  are  knowable.  Then  we  have  also  a 
verdict  rendered  by  some  of  the  keenest  thinkers  of  the 
past  three  hundred  years,  a  verdict  which  decides  that  the 
two  worlds,  the  world  of  mind  and  the  world  of  matter, 
cannot  interact.  Matter  can  act  only  upon  matter,  for 
energy  in  its  transformation  must  remain  energy.    That  is, 


412      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  world  of  physical  science  is  a  closed  system  from  which 
energy  cannot  depart  and  to  which  energy  cannot  be 
added.  For  such  thinkers  the  mental  becomes  a  mere 
epiphenomenon  or  a  parallel  but  non-interacting  aspect 
of  some  unknown  substance,  thing  or  system  of  which  the 
physical  is  the  other  aspect.  If  you  then  start  with 
Descartes  you  presuppose  a  world  of  minds  and  material 
particles  all  interacting;  but  if  you  stay  a  Cartesian  and 
think  the  matter  through,  you  end  believing  in  two  non- 
interacting  worlds,  or  systems.  The  neo-realist  accordingly 
asks:  Does  not  this  parallelism  seem  the  redudio  ad  ab- 
surdum  of  the  initial  Cartesian  assumptions?  Does  it 
not  indicate  the  need  of  investigating  anew  and  without 
any  traditional  bias  the  very  notion  of  the  mental  inherited 
by  modern  science? 

In  the  second  place,  the  one  remaining  way  of  escape 
for  the  Cartesian  which  history  records,  namely,  idealism, 
has  also  been  tried  and  found  wanting.  With  Berkeley 
or  with  Hegel  you  can  admit  the  inadequacy  of  Cartesian 
dualism  and  become  a  Cartesian  monist  by  showing  that 
the  world  of  experience  conceived  still  as  a  mental  world 
is  the  only  world  that  exists.  In  other  words,  starting 
with  the  Cartesian  notion  of  the  mental  you  can  show  that 
only  the  mental  exists.  Against  the  idealist  the  realist 
brings  two  charges.  First,  the  idealist  has  had  one  hun- 
dred years  and  more  in  which  to  win  the  scientific  world 
and  has  failed  to  convert  this  world.  Of  course,  this  failure 
may  be  due  not  to  the  inadequacy  of  idealism  but  to  the 
philosophical  obtuseness  of  even  the  intellectual!  Second, 
the  idealist  brings  us  back  to  the  world  from  which  all 
Cartesians  start.  He  moves  in  a  circle.  If  all  is  mind, 
there  is  a  mental-material  world  and  a  mental-mental 
world.  That  is  to  say,  physics  and  chemistry,  the  idealist 
is  careful  to  tell  us,  remain  as  legitimate  sciences.  And 
what  do  they  study?     Of  course  the  physical  world. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         413 

Hence  the  mental  world,  the  only  real  world,  includes  two 
worlds,  the  same  as  ever,  the  mental  and  the  material 
worlds  of  common  sense  and  of  science.  We  have  still  on 
our  hands  then  all  the  old  problems  that  idealism  claimed 
to  solve.  We  have  still  to  decide  how  to  define  and  to  dis- 
tinguish the  mental  and  the  physical,  how  to  account  for 
their  interaction,  and  how  to  explain  that  the  mind  can 
know  such  a  disparate  system  as  the  physical.  As  far  as 
psychology  is  concerned  are  we  not  precisely  where  we 
started,  back  with  Descartes? 

Let  us  next  follow  the  second  line  of  realistic  argument. 
Science,  since  Galilei,  has  been  outgrowing  the  notion 
cause  and  has  been  substituting  for  it  the  mathematical 
notion  function.  Consider  the  following  simple  illustra- 
tions of  what  the  mathematician  means  by  a  function. 
The  length  of  the  circumference  of  a  circle  is  a  function 
of  the  radius;  for,  as  the  radius  is  more  or  less  in  length, 
so  stage  for  stage  (or  in  one  to  one  correspondence)  is  the 
circumference.  The  amount  of  pressure  that  has  to  be 
exerted  upon  a  lever  is  a  function  of  the  position  of  the 
fulcrum.  The  distance  the  water  from  a  garden  hose  will 
carry  is  a  function  of  the  angle  at  which  the  nozzle  is  held. 
What  then  does  the  mathematician  mean  by  function? 
Merely  that  there  are  two  series,  and  that  for  each  value 
or  stage  in  the  one  there  is  a  corresponding  value  or  stage 
in  the  other.  For  each  radius  there  is  a  corresponding 
circle.  Or  given  one  value  you  always  get  another  or 
corresponding  value  or  given  one  magnitude  you  always 
get  a  corresponding  magnitude.  In  short,  a  function  is 
but  a  mathematical  way  of  describing  a  certain  relation 
between  the  entities  that  vary  in  one  to  one  correspond- 
ence. To  come  at  once  to  the  point,  as  modern  science 
advances,  this  notion  of  the  functional  relation  is  super- 
seding altogether  the  ancient  and  even  pre-historic  notion 
of  cause.     The  notion  of  cause  is  probably  due  to  our 


414      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

kinesthetic  feelings  such  as  we  have  when  we  push,  pull, 
twist  and  bend.  We  feel  ourselves  as  doers,  as  powers,  as 
causes,  or  as  forces  and  have  peopled  nature  with  these 
ghosts.  We  think  of  dynamite  bursting  or  tearing  the 
rock  apart  as  we  tear  paper.  It  is  a  doer,  a  cause,  a  giant 
in  disguise.  David  Hume  analyzed  this  notion  of  cause 
and  showed  that  we  do  not  apprehend  any  such  relation 
between  a  cause  and  its  effect.  Rather  what  we  apprehend 
is  precisely  what  the  mathematician  means  by  function. 
A  radius  does  not  make  the  circle  or  do  anything  muscular 
to  lengthen  it.  The  'position  of  a  fulcrum  or  the  size  of  a 
wheel  or  the  angle  at  which  the  nozzle  of  a  hose  is  held  are 
each  and  all  agents  in  this  world  of  ours.  If  anything  does, 
or  causes  or  forces,  they  do  so;  and  yet  they  are  lifeless, 
motionless,  non-muscular  entities.  They  are  merely 
geometrical  entities,  merely  mathematical  relations.  Now, 
as  science  advances,  the  so-called  causes  resolve  themselves 
into  these  functional  relations,  that  is,  the  more  we  learn 
about  the  objects  and  events  of  nature  the  more  these 
relations  stand  out  in  relief  and  the  quicker  the  causes 
and  forces  of  our  barbaric  and  prehistoric  ways  of  think- 
ing disappear.  Nature  becomes  an  indefinitely  complex 
cobweb  whose  minute  threads  are,  in  the  mathematical 
sense  of  the  word,  functions. 

If  then  in  solving  the  problem:  How  do  mind  and  body 
interact?  we  no  longer  conceive  them  to  he  connected  as 
two  substances  causing  changes  of  state  in  one  another,  we 
have  but  to  seek  the  functional  relations  holding  between 
the  two  systems.  These  relations  can  be  discovered  by 
experimental  research  and  are  not  matters  to  be  debated 
by  rationalistic  speculation.  They  are  relations  that  can 
be  observed  and  do  not  involve  hidden  substances.  Thus 
the  old  problem  of  the  interaction  of  mind  and  body  disappears 
altogether.  No  doubt  research  will  find  that  some  func- 
tional relations  do  not  hold  between  the  mental  and  the 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         415 

physical  but  hold  solely  between  parts  of  the  body  as  a 
chemical-physical  machine;  and  this  will  then  prove  to  be 
the  half-truth  hidden  in  the  at  present  widely  held  doctrine 
of  non-interaction.  On  the  other  hand,  other  functional 
relations  will  be  found  to  hold  between  the  two  systems, 
and  this  in  turn  will  prove  to  be  the  half-truth  hidden  in 
the  older  Cartesian  doctrine  that  mind  and  body  interact. 
Indeed,  the  realist  believes,  many  of  these  functional  re- 
lations have  already  been  discovered  and  already  constitute 
a  large  part  of  the  results  of  physiological  psychology. 

An  objection  similar  to  that  made  against  the  notion, 
cause,  can  be  made  against  the  notion,  substance.  To 
ordinary  thought  there  are  the  many  stuffs  of  which  a 
thing  can  be  composed,  such  as,  wood,  stone,  iron,  water, 
fat  or  bone.^  Moreover,  the  stuff  of  which  a  thing  is 
composed  is  ordinarily  thought  to  explain  its  behavior 
or  its  so-called  properties.  It  is  strong  because  it  is  steel, 
it  burns  because  it  is  wood.  It  is  powerful  because  it  is 
dynamite,  or  he  is  strong  because  he  is  muscular  and  he 
is  a  mighty  leader  because  of  his  iron  will.  For  rigorous 
scientific  thought  all  such  notions  belong  in  the  same 
group  as  fairies,  ghosts,  giants,  magic  and  other  creatures 
of  pre-scientific  speculation.  For  science  things  are  what 
they  are,  do  what  they  do,  have  the  properties  they  pos- 
sess, because  of  their  structure.  And  if  we  ask  what  we  mean 
by  structure,  we  are  told,  relations  between  parts,  or  or- 
ganization. Thus  the  solar  system  behaves  as  it  does  or 
has  the  properties  it  has,  because  of  its  organization. 
A  smoke  ring,  a  musical  note,  a  locomotive  and  a  vessel 
filled  with  gas  are  each  and  all  simple  illustrations  of  the 
nature  of  things  being  no  more  than  their  structure  in  dis- 

1  To  the  Greek  thinker  all  of  these  seemed  reducible  to  the  four 
elements,  earth,  air,  fire  and  water.  To  the  thinker  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  they  seemed  reducible  to  matter,  or  to  matter  and 
spirit,  or  to  the  "ultimate  substance." 


416      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

guise.  And  this  means  in  turn  that  science  has  abandoned 
or  is  abandoning  the  notion  of  substance  and  the  search  for 
the  substance  of  things.^ 

These  two  philosophical  changes  taking  place  in  modem 
thought  ^  are  the  very  principle,  if  I  mistake  not,  of  the 
new  realism,  which  endeavors  to  solve  the  old  problem 
of  mind  and  knowledge  by  discarding  the  notions 
cause  and  substance  inherited  by  modern  thought  from 
the  ancient  world  and  by  applying  the  modem  scien- 
tific notions  of  structure  and  function  to  the  facts  of 
mental  life  as  science  does  to  the  facts  of  the  physical 
world. 

From  prehistoric  barbarism  man  has  found  in  himself 
a  twofold  nature,  body  and  soul.  The  body  has  its  proper- 
ties and  can  do  its  acts  because  it  is  one  sort  of  a  substance. 
In  contrast,  the  soul  has  markedly  different  properties 
and  does  markedly  different  acts,  because  the  soul  is  of 
quite  another  substance.  The  paradoxes  and  absurdities 
to  which  this  dualism  leads  have  been  pointed  out.  But 
it  can  be  attacked  directly.  The  human  mind  is  not  an 
ultimate,  it  is  far  from  being  a  substance,  as  a  mere  matter 
of  fact.  It  has  a  structure  and  this  structure  is  gradually 
being  discovered.  It  has  parts,  for  disease  can  injure 
some  and  not  others,  education  can  alter  some  and  not 
others.  It  differs  from  man  to  man  and  these  differences 
are  in  part  due  to  heredity.  In  some  respects  a  man  can  be 
mentally  like  his  mother,  in  other  respects  like  his  father. 
Again,  the  human  mind  is  not  an  ultimate,  for  in  part 

^  The  chemist  is  aware  that  his  so-called  elements  are  not  stuffs  in 
the  old  sense  but  are  differently  organized  matter;  and  the  physicist 
is  aware  in  turn  that  his  matter  is  not  a  stuff  but  either  an  organiza- 
tion of  the  ether  or  another  name  for  certain  mathematical  values 
such  as  mass. 

'^  Already  clearly  present  in  the  attack  of  Bishop  Berkeley  against 
the  Cartesian  rationaUstic  mechanical  conception  of  nature  and  in 
the  positivism  of  David  Hume. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         417 

at  least  it  has  been  explained.  In  general,  this  explana- 
tion is  biological.  As  our  bodies  are  fitted  for  our  environ- 
ment, so  are  our  minds.  As  our  bodies  are  inherited,  so 
are  mental  traits.  As  our  muscles  are  fitted  to  perform 
certain  acts,  so  have  we  the  impulses,  the  satisfactions  and 
desires  leading  to  the  requisite  muscular  contractions. 
Use  of  any  mental  trait  strengthens  that  trait.  Disuse 
weakens  it.  Mental  acts  leading  to  satisfaction  are  more 
liable  to  be  done  again,  and  mental  acts  leading  to  annoy- 
ance or  pain  tend  to  disappear.  In  general,  the  physiology 
of  the  nervous  system  is  throwing  more  and  more  light 
upon  the  working  and  development  and  training  of  the 
mind.  Indeed,  the  more  science  learns  regarding  the  mind 
the  more  closely  related  are  mind  and  body  turning  out 
to  be  and  the  more  and  more  absurd  is  becoming  the  older 
dualism  of  body  and  mind. 

What  then  does  the  realist  offer  instead  of  this  tradi- 
tional dualism?  The  realist  urges  that  the  belief  in  two 
sorts  of  stuff,  the  mental  and  the  physical,  be  discarded 
and  that  we  learn  to  think  of  both  the  mental  and  the 
physical  in  terms  of  relations,  structures  or  organizations 
having  many  members  in  common.  For  example,  the 
physical  chair  and  the  chair  I  perceive,  are  in  part  one  and 
the  same  entity.  We  call  the  chair  physical  when  we  as- 
sert certain  of  its  relations,  its  weight,  its  ability  to  reflect 
light,  to  burn,  to  resist  the  pressure  of  our  bodies,  and  to 
move  through  space.  We  call  the  chair  our  mental  state 
when  we  attend  to  our  behavior  and  perceive  that  the 
chair  is  a  part  of  the  situation  to  which  we  are  responding. 
For  example,  we  avoid  running  into  the  chair,  we  give 
money  to  purchase  the  chair,  we  go  to  another  room  in 
order  to  get  the  chair,  or  though  the  chair  is  not  at  hand 
we  respond  to  it  in  a  way  called  talking  about  the  chair. 
In  other  words,  one  and  the  same  entity  can  be  both  physi- 
cal and  mental.    It  is  physical  in  those  relations  studied 


418      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

by  the  physical  sciences  and  it  is  mental  as  part  of  the 
situation  to  which  we  as  behaving  organisms  are  respond- 
ing. Thus  the  difference  between  the  physical  and  the 
mental  is  a  difference  solely  of  relations  and  not  a  difference 
of  stuff  or  of  entity.^ 

Knowing  likewise  is  a  relation,  a  certain  type  of  response 
of  a  living  organism,  and  is  not,  as  the  Cartesian  pictures 
it,  a  reaching  out  of  a  mind  in  one  world  over  into  another 
world  beyond  a  bottomless  chasm  in  order  to  grasp  or 
apprehend  the  contents  of  that  world.  Knowing  is  not 
some  transcendent  act  beyond  the  reach  of  science  but  is 
as  much  an  event  in  the  world  about  us  as  is  the  blowing 
wind  or  the  falling  stone  and  as  such  is  as  readily  studied 
as  any  of  nature's  complex  happenings.  Entities  pass 
in  and  out  of  our  field  of  knowledge  precisely  as  objects 
pass  in  or  out  of  the  field  of  things  to  which  an  animal  is 
responding,  indeed  as  aforesaid  knowing  is  but  a  complex 
type  of  behaving.  The  teacher  readily  ascertains  whether 
or  not  the  child  knows  its  lesson,  and  does  so  by  putting 
the  child  in  a  certain  situation  and  by  then  watching  the 
child's  response.  I  learn  whether  or  not  I  still  know  my 
calculus  by  taking  some  problems   from  the  old  text- 

'  The  realist  finds  many  other  worlds,  or  logical  systems  besides  the 
two  of  Descartes,  e.  g.,  he  finds  the  world  of  pure  mathematics,  the 
world  of  art  and  the  world  of  morality.  The  ultimate  stuff,  or  system 
of  entities  to  which  we  come  when  we  regard  things  merely  as  objects  of 
discourse,  is  not  either  matter  or  mind  or  any  other  specific  stuff  but 
merely  stuff  in  general,  mere  being.  For  example,  what  is  red,  or  what 
is  a  noise  merely  as  a  possible  object  of  discourse?  The  answer  is 
not  "something  physical"  or  "something  mental"  but  merely  "some- 
thing." This  ultimate  stuff  whose  only  attribute  is  "being  a  possible 
object  of  discourse"  has  been  called  by  the  realists  "the  neutral  stuff 
or  the  neutral  universe."  Thus  the  realist  differs  from  the  Cartesian, 
who  finds  in  every  object  of  discourse  "a  mental  state"  or  "an  expe- 
rience," by  maintaining  that  such  a  mere  object  of  discourse  is  not 
specifically  a  member  of  any  system  except  "mere  being,"  or  "mere 
object  of  discourse." 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES  419 

book  and  trying  to  solve  them.    This  solving  is  distinctly 
a  set  of  responses. 

The  subjective  is  similarly  defined  by  the  realist.  A 
dog's  world,  that  is,  the  world  to  which  the  dog  responds, 
is  but  a  small  part  of  the  total  universe  as  the  psychologist 
readily  shows,  that  is  to  say,  the  dog's  world  is  but  a  selec- 
tion out  of  the  total  universe  of  our  discourse,  a  selection 
made  by  the  dog's  nervous  system.  So  man's  world  is  a 
selection  and  science  can  say  many  things  regarding  the 
sort  of  selection  it  is.  Man  has  a  human  world,  and  he 
has  such  a  world  in  precisely  the  same  sense  in  which  a 
dog  can  be  said  to  have  a  dog's  world.  No  doubt  man's 
ability  to  know  the  universe  is  limited  by  the  character  of 
his  nervous  system;  and  therefore  man's  world  and  the 
universe  are  not  to  be  identified,  though  what  man  knows 
belongs  to  that  universe  and  much  that  the  dog  knows 
belongs  also  to  our  human  world.  Again  man's  sensory 
world  is  not  the  whole  world  any  more  than  is  the  sensory 
world  of  a  blind  man  all  of  our  world.  It  too  is  a  selec- 
tion and  a  very  compUcated  one  which  science  needs  to 
study  and  to  explain  and  which  we  to-day  understand 
only  in  small  part.  However,  we  are  not  entirely  ignorant. 
That  our  eyes  are  optical  instruments  and  as  such  select 
in  part  what  we  are  capable  of  responding  to  is  trite  in- 
formation. That  we  respond  to  things  in  perspective 
somewhat  as  the  photographic  camera  does  and  that  this 
is  due  to  the  sort  of  eyes  and  nervous  system  we  have,  in 
short,  that  we  select  optical  projections  of  a  certain  sort 
instead  of  the  entity  whose  optical  projections  they  are 
said  to  be,  is  also  apparent  and  has  its  explanation. 
Finally,  that  our  nervous  systems  are  not  perfectly  ad- 
justed to  the  total  world  to  which  we  need  to  respond, 
that  our  inborn  or  acquired  responses  to  the  world  to  which 
we  are  capable  of  responding  are  imperfect,  is  only  too 
evident.    Error  is  such  an  imperfect  response.    In  short. 


420      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

all  of  these  factors  make  man's  world  in  part  a  subjective 
world.  That  is  to  say,  man's  world  is  subjective  in  being 
a  selected  world.  It  is  subjective  because  man's  responses 
are  but  imperfectly  adapted  to  the  world  that  concerns  his 
welfare. 

Finally,  man's  world  is  subjective  for  a  third  reason, 
because  the  nervous  system  itself  contributes  to  man^s  world. 
The  nervous  system  is  a  complex  physical-chemical  in- 
strument and,  precisely  as  other  physical  instruments, 
alters  and  contributes  to  the  world  of  which  it  is  a  part. 
For  example,  mirrors  contribute  optical  projections, 
prisms  contribute  spectra,  magnets  contribute  magnetic 
fields,  and  whistles  and  musical  strings  contribute  un- 
dulations. So  also  nervous  systems,  in  ways  but  little 
understood,  contribute  to  the  totahty  of  existence.  Thus 
the  contents  of  our  dreams  and  of  some  of  our  illusions  are 
subjective  in  the  sense  that  the  nervous  system  is  one  of 
the  conditions  of  their  existence.  But  this  fact  does  not 
prevent  some  of  these  subjective  contents  being  physical, 
even  as  truly  physical  as  is  the  image  in  the  mirror.  How- 
ever, what  they  are  is  a  special  problem  of  science  and 
not,  as  for  the  Cartesian,  a  general  problem  of  philosophy. 
They  are  not  a  mental  stuff  to  be  recognized  as  such  by 
the  mere  glance  of  a  philosopher.  Rather  they  are  like  a 
spectrum  to  be  elaborately  investigated  by  experimental 
science  and  to  have  their  nature  determined  by  research. 

Thus  the  neo-realists  urge  that  the  nature  of  the  mental 
be  defined  in  terms  of  relations  and  functions  and  no  longer 
in  terms  of  causes  and  stuffs.  They  point  out  that  doing 
so  is  but  to  adopt  in  psychology  that  general  positivism 
to  be  seen  in  mathematical  physics  and  more  and  more 
extensively  throughout  the  field  of  modern  science.  They 
claim  that  by  so  doing  the  mental  can  be  sharply  distin- 
guished from  the  physical,  the  objective  from  the  sub- 
jective.    Finally,  they  maintain  that  the  paradoxes  of 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         421 

phenomenalism,  idealism,  and  parallelism  can  be  eliminated 
and  the  nature  of  knowing  stated  in  terms  which  make 
knowing,  what  it  undoubtedly  is,  a  proper  object  of  scien- 
tific and  experimental  research.^ 

For  further  study  read: 

The  New  Reahsm,  1912,  2-42,  303-373,  471-483; 
James,  W.,  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  1912,  1-154; 
Watson,  J.  B.,  Behavior,  An  Introduction  to  Comparative 

Psychology,  1-28. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Holt,  E.  B.,  The  Concept  of  Consciousness,  1914; 
Spaulding,  E.  G.,  The  New  Rationalism  (forthcoming); 
The  New  Realism,  1912; 
Mach,   E.    (transl.  Williams  and  Waterlow),  Analysis  of 

Sensations,  chapter  III. 

8.  Social  democracy. — In  the  immediately  preceding 
sections  we  have  studied  the  vast  changes  recent  decades 
have  witnessed  taking  place  in  modern  scientific  thought. 
In  this  section  we  are  to  study  the  equally  vast  changes 
in  the  economic,  political,  social  and  moral  life  of  the 
western  world  during  the  past  one  hundred  and  especially 
the  past  fifty  years.  These  changes  can  be  summed  up 
in  the  phrase,  the  rise  of  social  democracy.'^  That  is  to  say, 
during  the  past  fifty  and  more  years  the  western  world 
has  become  markedly  more  democratic  in  its  political, 
social  and  moral  hfe  and  has  also  become  markedly  more 
socialized.  Both  changes  can  be  traced  back  to  move- 
ments of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  es- 
pecially to  the  democratic  movement  in  England  during 

^  Part  of  this  section  has  been  taken  from  an  article  by  the  author, 
"The  New  Realism,"  in  The  Chronicle,  September,  1916. 

^  In  this  section  I  am  indebted  directly  to  Professor  J.  H.  Robin- 
son's An  Outline  of  the  History  of  the  Intellectual  Class  in  Western 
Europe,  1915.  The  field  is  so  vast  that  this  section  has  to  be  Uttle 
more  than  a  list  of  topics,  a  syllabus. 


422      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

these  centuries  and  to  the  French  Revolution.  But  neither 
change  is  the  mere  outcome  of  eighteenth  century  condi- 
tions, for  the  nineteenth  century  has  witnessed  the  rise  of 
new  and  powerful  environmental  factors  which  have  revo- 
lutionized the  entire  economic  life  of  the  modern  world. 
Indeed,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  assert  that  if  we  say,  "so 
recent  a  man  as  George  Washington  lived  in  much  the 
same  world  as  did  Aristotle,"  we  may  consistently  add, 
"but  the  man  of  to-day  lives  in  another  universe."  This 
new  universe  is  the  product  of  an  industrial  revolution, 
the  like  of  which  man  has  never  before  witnessed. 

(a)  The  industrial  revolution. — This  industrial  revolu- 
tion has  been  due  to  the  use  of  iron  and  coal  and  to  the 
discovery  and  development  of  steam  and  electrical  machin- 
ery. It  has  brought  into  being  the  modern  factory  and 
the  vast  organization  of  labor  employed  in  our  large  in- 
dustries, the  great  corporations  that  direct  our  economic 
enterprise,  the  exceeding  large  cities  making  our  popula- 
tion half  urban,  and  the  means  of  easy,  cheap  and  rapid 
intercommunication  between  almost  all  parts  of  the  globe. 
It  has  increased  our  wealth  enormously  and  therefore  our 
leisure  and  our  means  for  scientific  research  and  for  study 
and  culture;  and  it  has  raised  the  standard  of  living  of 
every  class  in  the  industrial  nations.  Not  only  has  it 
brought  close  together  the  individual  men  of  the  same 
nation  but  it  has  made  nations  themselves  more  and  more 
interdependent.  It  has  opened  a  vast  range  of  thought 
and  endeavor  to  better  mankind  through  the  abolishing 
or  reducing  of  poverty,  ignorance,  disease,  crime  and  war. 
It  has  raised  the  hope  and  ideal  of  universal  peace,  and  of 
the  co-operation  and  federation  of  all  nations. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Bym,  E.  W.,  Progress  of  Invention  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century; 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         423 

Gibbins,  H.  B,,  Economic  and  Industrial  Progress  of  The 

Century,  1903; 
Wallace  and  others,  The  Progress  of  the  Century,  1901 ; 
The  Nineteenth  Century,  A  Review  of  Progress  (articles 

reprinted  from  the  "N.  Y.  Evening  Post")- 

(b)  Democracy. — A  new  conception  of  democracy  has 
arisen  supplanting  that  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
"people"  has  come  to  mean  every  member  of  the  nation; 
and  the  franchise  has  been  extended  until  in  some  com- 
monwealths every  normal  adult  has  an  equal  right  to  be 
heard  and  to  be  represented  in  the  government.  Graft 
and  special  privilege,  the  dominating  of  the  interests  of 
special  classes  and  hidden  government  have  been  markedly 
reduced;  and  government  in  the  interest  of  all  the  people 
has  markedly  increased  not  only  in  political  theory  but 
also  in  actual  political  practice.  Finally,  governments 
have  become  far  more  responsive  and  more  quickly  re- 
sponsive to  the  thought  and  wishes  of  the  people. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Scherger,  G.  L.,  The  Evolution  of  Modem  Liberty,  1904; 
Rose,  T.  H.,  Rise  of  Democracy,  1897. 

(c)  Socialism,  the  religion  of  industrial  democracy. — 

The  word  socialism  may  be  used  in  a  broad  and  a  narrow 
sense.  In  the  broad  sense,  socialism  is  to-day  a  large  part 
of  the  religion  of  every  enlightened  member  of  the  demo- 
cratic nations.  As  an  ideal  it  implies  co-operation,  social 
service,  social  efficiency,  the  universal  sharing  in  the 
wealth,  culture  and  progress  of  the  nations  by  the  mem- 
bers of  the  nation ;  it  implies  the  bettering  of  all  mankind 
individually  and  the  merciful  care  of  the  helpless,  the  sick, 
the  delinquent  and  the  deficient;  and  it  implies  the  pro- 
moting of  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  and  co-operation  be- 
tween all  peoples  and  the  eliminating  of  the  ancient  preda- 


424      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

tory  spirit  of  men  and  of  nations,  or  rather,  the  redirectmg 
of  this  predatory  spirit  so  that  men  will  exploit  nature 
instead  of  exploiting  one  another. 

In  the  narrow  sense,  socialism  is  the  name  of  a  familiar 
social  and  economic  doctrine  and  policy  that  would  further 
revolutionize  the  industrial  and  political  world.  This 
sociahstic  movement  is  so  thoroughly  characteristic  of 
the  nineteenth  century  and  of  our  time  and  has  had  among 
its  members  so  many  intellectual  men,  that  its  history 
belongs  in  the  history  of  recent  philosophic  thought  as 
truly  as  does  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 

As  defined  by  Bonar,^  "Socialism  is  that  policy  or 
theory  which  aims  at  securing  by  the  action  of  the  central 
democratic  authority  a  better  distribution,  and,  in  due 
subordination  thereunto,  a  better  production  of  wealth 
than  now  prevails."  ''Modern  sociaHsm  is  (a)  opposed 
to  the  policy  of  laissez  faire,  which  aims  at  the  least  possi- 
ble interference  with  industrial  competition  between  pri- 
vate persons  or  groups  of  persons,  and  (h)  suspicious  of  a 
policy  of  mere  regulation,  which  aims  at  close  surveillance 
and  control  of  the  proceedings  of  industrial  competitors, 
but  would  avoid  direct  initiative  in  production  and  direct 
attempts  to  level  the  inequalities  of  wealth.  The  leading 
idea  of  the  socialist  is  to  convert  into  general  benefit  what 
is  now  the  gain  of  a  few.  He  shares  this  idea  with  the 
anarchist,  the  positivist,  the  co-operator  and  other  reform- 
ers; but,  unlike  them,  to  secure  this  end  he  would  employ 
the  compulsory  powers  of  the  sovereign  state,  or  the  powers 
of  the  municipahty  delegated  by  the  sovereign." 

Socialism  as  a  movement  in  this  narrow  sense,  goes 
back  to  certain  Utopian  thinkers  of  the  first  half  and 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  France  and  England. 
As  a  more  scientific  theory  and  policy  it  goes  back  to 
thinkers  in  Germany,  influenced  by  Hegel's  doctrine  of 
^  Bonar,  J.,  art.  Socialism,  Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         425 

the  development  of  society,  of  whom  Karl  Marx  {fi.  c. 
1860)  was  the  most  prominent  and  influential.  In  recent 
decades  it  has  become  distinctly  more  scientific  in  that  it 
is  based  upon  an  earnest  study  of  economic  science  and 
economic,  social  and  political  facts.  Yet  as  distinct  from 
economic  and  pohtical  science,  it  still  retains  a  marked 
rationaUstic  character  and  a  spirit  that  may  be  called 
religious  rather  than  scientific.  As  a  movement  its  politi- 
cal influence  in  our  time,  especially  in  Europe,  is  powerful; 
and  as  a  political  party  the  number  of  its  members  has 
grown  steadily  until  to-day  it  forms  in  a  few  European 
countries  a  genuine  rival  of  other  parties.  Another  aspect 
of  great  importance  is  its  tendency  to  be  an  international 
movement  with  aims  and  policies  opposed  to  the  prevail- 
ing nationahsm  of  our  time. 

For  further  study  read: 

Bonar,  art.  Socialism,  Encycl.  Brit.,  11th  ed.; 

MacDonald,  J.  M.,  The  Socialist  Movement  (Home  Uni- 
versity Library); 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  Part  III. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Kirkup,  T.,  History  of  Socialism  (new  ed.  by  Pease),  1913; 

Patten,  S.,  The  New  Basis  of  Civihzation,  1907. 

(d)  The  new  social  and  anthropological  sciences. — As 

is  to  be  expected  in  such  an  age  as  the  present  time  has 
just  been  described  to  be,  there  has  been  during  the  past 
fifty  years  a  great  interest  in  and  a  vast  development  of 
those  sciences  that  directly  study  man,  society,  health, 
education  and  wealth.  This  is  to  be  seen,  not  merely  in 
the  growth  and  spread  of  research  in  the  fields  of  ethnology, 
psychology,  medicine,  sanitation,  education,  economics, 
social  and  political  science,  and  history,  but  also  in  the 
change  within  the  traditional  curricula  of  our  colleges 
and  universities  giving  a  large  place  to  these  studies  which 


426      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

formerly  were  all  but  unrepresented,  and  in  the  increas- 
ingly large  number  of  students  nowadays  attracted  to 
these  subjects  of  study  where  but  a  few  decades  ago  they 
were  exceeding  few.  For  example,  it  is  hardly  an  exagger- 
ation to  say  that  fifty  per  cent  of  American  students  and 
men  of  research  are  engaged  as  specialists  in  these  fields 
of  study. 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Ingram,  J.  K.,  History  of  Political  Economy,  2d.  ed.,  1907; 
Small,  A.  W.,  The  Meaning  of  Social  Science,  1910; 
Haddon,  History  of  Anthropology; 
Robinson,  J.  H.,  The  New  History,  chapter  III. 

(e)  The  readjustment  of  education  to  the  new  knowl- 
edge and  to  the  new  needs. — Two  great  transformations 
of  the  schools  have  taken  place  during  the  past  fifty  years 
especially,  and  these  changes  are  not  only  related  to  the 
aforementioned  change  in  our  social  world  but  are  indica- 
tive of  a  vast  philosophical  or  intellectual  change.  First, 
the  schools  have  tended  more  and  more  to  pass  from  the 
control  and  management  of  the  church  into  the  hands  of 
the  government  and  the  public.  Education  has  been  more 
and  more  secularized.  Second,  the  courses  of  study  and 
the  methods  of  instruction  have  changed  radically.  The 
educational  ideal  of  the  "liberal  arts"  and  the  "classics" 
and  the  confidence  in  abstract  reasoning  as  a  means  of 
"training  the  mind"  have  in  spite  of  opposition  and 
tradition  given  place  to  a  new  conception  of  education  and 
to  a  new  educational  policy.  Whatever  may  be  the  dan- 
gers involved  therein,  education  is  becoming  more  and 
more  utilitarian,  more  and  more  an  attempt  to  train  the 
child  for  the  actual  life  before  him  and  more  and  more 
an  endeavor  to  take  the  child's  actual  inborn  and  acquired 
mental  nature  into  consideration  in  the  devising  of  methods 
and  the  selecting  of  the  subjects  of  study. 


PRESENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES         427 

For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  Education,  1912; 

Dewey,  J.  and  E.,  The  Schools  of  To-morrow,  1915; 

Flexner,  A.,  The  American  College,  1908. 

(f)  The  freeing  of  thought.— Finally,  the  process  of 
democratizing  society  is  to  be  seen  in  the  further  freeing 
of  religious  belief  and  scientific  theory.  It  is  becoming 
nearer  and  nearer  to  being  true  that  a  man  may  adopt 
any  religious  creed  in  which  he  honestly  believes,  that 
church  and  state  are  separating  as  two  distinct  social 
organizations,  that  religious  faith  carries  therewith  no  legal 
disability,  that  the  many  religious  denominations  permit 
among  their  members  greater  latitude  for  honest  individ- 
ual differences  of  belief,  and  that  men  are  truly  and  com- 
pletely tolerant  toward  their  fellowmen  who  hold  other 
faiths.  Again,  it  is  becoming  nearer  and  nearer  to  being 
true  that  the  man  of  science  may  freely  investigate,  draw 
conclusions  and  publish  the  results  of  his  research.  Men 
are  learning  that  theories  are  to  be  judged  not  as  matters 
of  personal  or  arbitrary  choice,  but  as  matters  depending 
for  their  right  to  be  upon  facts,  that  theories  are  to  be 
judged  by  fact,  not  by  emotion  or  by  tradition,  and  that 
truth  even  though  unwelcome  and  destructive  of  old  and 
sacred  tradition  is  far  better  than  error  and  far  safer  than 
ignorance.  However  far  from  complete  philosophical 
freedom  we  may  be,  we  are  much  nearer  to  such  freedom 
than  the  modern  world  has  ever  been  before;  and  we  are 
decidedly  less  fearful  than  were  our  ancestors  of  the  con- 
sequences of  such  freedom.  We  are  tending  more  and 
more  to  believe  that  man's  inborn  nature  and  intellectual 
capacities  can  be  trusted  in  the  long  run  to  lead  him  surely 
to  seek,  to  find  and  to  revere  the  good,  the  true  and  the 
beautiful.  If  this  belief  is  sound,  there  is  far  greater  danger 
in  the  spirit  of  conservatism  than  in  the  spirit  of  radical- 


428      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ism.  Though  the  conservative  may  preserve  the  good 
there  is,  the  radical  alone  can  add  to  the  good  and  eliminate 
the  evil.  The  radical  makes  many  mistakes  and  must  be 
permitted  to  do  so  in  the  interest  of  progress,  for  he  is  the 
indispensable  condition  of  progress.  The  better  faith 
and  the  better  knowledge  cannot  be  got  without  risk  and 
without  price  and  without  mistakes.  They  can  be  found 
only  by  men  whose  method  of  search  is  the  trial  and  error 
method,  the  method  to  which  all  other  methods  of  dis- 
covery and  learning  can  be  reduced. 

For  further  study  read: 

Robinson,  J.  H.,  The  New  History,  chapter  VIII. 
For  more  extensive  study  read: 

Bury,  History  of  the  Freedom  of  Thought  (Home  University 
Library) ; 

Dickinson,  G.  L.,  Justice  and  Liberty,  1909; 

Mill,  J.  S.,  Liberty; 

Morley,  J.,  On  Compromise; 

Scherger,  G.  L.,  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Liberty,  1904. . 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

CONCLUSION 

1.  The  complexity  of  our  present  intellectual  life. — A 

detailed  account  of  present  philosophical  tendencies  would 
make  quite  evident  the  extreme  complexity  of  our  intel- 
lectual life;  but  even  the  highly  general  account  just  given 
must  impress  the  thoughtful  reader  with  this  complexity. 
If  we  take  a  cross-section  of  the  population  of  any  western 
land  and  examine  the  intellectual  life  from  the  lowliest 
peasant  to  the  master  of  science,  we  behold  philosophical 
strata  varying  from  the  crude  beliefs  of  prehistoric  and 
prescientific  man  to  the  most  enlightened  beliefs  man  has 
ever  possessed.  If  within  the  highest  intellectual  classes 
we  take  another  cross-section,  as  it  were  at  right  angles 
to  the  former  cross-section,  we  shall  see  again  an  equally 
complex  array  of  philosophic  belief  varying  from  the 
extreme  naturalism  of  one  man  to  the  extreme  romanticism 
of  another,  from  the  extreme  rationalism  of  some  to  the 
extreme  empiricism  and  positivism  of  others,  and  from 
the  extreme  subjectivism  of  a  few  to  the  extreme  objec- 
tivism of  another  small  group. 

2.  The  central  tendency  man  of  to-day  and  the  central 
tendency  man  of  the  intellectual  class. — However,  the 
averages  or  central  tendencies  of  these  classes  are  the  data 
which  especially  interest  the  historian.  How  does  the 
central  tendency  man  differ  to-day  from  the  central  tend- 
ency man  of  other  ages?  Doubtless,  he  is  more  naturalis- 
tic, less  superstitious,  less  emotional  and  hysterical,  and 
more  intellectual.     But  we  do  well  not  to  estimate  the 

429 


430      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

difference  to  be  so  great  as  to  place  him  far  above  the  cen- 
tral tendency  man  of  other  ages.  He  has  indeed  tools, 
methods  and  customs  that  make  him  far  more  efficient; 
but  it  is  a  mistake  to  infer  that  these  instruments  of  culture 
are  thoroughly  understood  and  have  made  a  great  differ- 
ence philosophically.  What  is  rather  true  is  that  the 
intellectual  classes  are  absolutely  far  larger  and  relatively 
somewhat  larger  than  they  have  ever  been  before  in  human 
history.  Again,  the  central  tendencies  of  the  intellectual 
classes  are  matters  of  great  importance.  Who  these 
central  tendency  intellectual  men  are,  is  of  course  difficult 
to  prove;  but  I  believe  that  the  average  college  student  or 
alumnus  is  as  high  as  these  central  tendency  men.  Any 
one  well  acquainted  with  the  average  college  man  knows 
only  too  well  how  easy  it  is  to  overestimate  his  philosophi- 
cal stature;  but  it  is  easy  also  to  underestimate  this  stat- 
ure. He  is  not  a  Plato  or  an  Aristotle,  but  he  has  absorbed 
an  immense  amount  of  modern  philosophy.  He  has  a 
superior  cosmology;  he  has  absorbed  the  chief  lessons  of 
modern  naturahsm  though  he  is  far  from  being  a  consistent 
naturalist;  he  is  vaguely  an  evolutionist,  an  empiricist, 
pragmatist,  and  experimentahst ;  he  is  not  above  the 
Greeks  as  a  Cartesian  dualist  though  he  is  more  of  a  sub- 
jectivist;  and  he  is  markedly  a  sentimentalist  and  a  ro- 
manticist. If  we  take  the  much  smaller  group,  the  intel- 
lectual class  in  the  narrowest  sense,  and  seek  its  central 
tendencies,  we  shall  find,  if  I  mistake  not,  a  decided  natu- 
rahsm, empiricism,  pragmatism,  experimentahsm  and 
Cartesian  duafism,  but  also  a  growing  tolerance  and  in- 
terest in  romanticism.  Eucken,  James,  and  Bergson  are 
receiving  a  different  hearing  to-day  from  what  they  would 
have  got  from  the  same  class  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
3.  The  near  future  of  present  philosophical  tendencies. 
— It  does  not  seem  venturesome  to  predict  that  the  great 
philosophical  movement  of  the  twentieth  century  will  be 


CONCLUSION  431 

an  endeavor  to  combine  and  harmonize  intellectualism 
and  romanticism.  Nor  does  it  seem  venturesome  to  pre- 
dict that  the  issue  between  rehgion  and  naturaUsm  will  be 
solved  by  the  average  twentieth  century  thinker  through 
romanticism  added  to  naturalism,  or  through  some  method 
of  harmonizing  the  two.  Regarding  rationaUsm  and  sub- 
jectivism it  is  more  venturesome  to  predict.  Pragmatism 
and  experimentalism  are  certainly  growing  tendencies  of 
our  intellectual  life;  and  as  long  as  the  intellectual  world 
about  us  is  rapidly  growing  in  information  they  seem  liable 
to  remain  powerful  tendencies.  However,  should  there  be 
a  slowing  down  of  the  rate  of  successful  scientific  research 
or  should  the  very  increase  of  information  force  upon  us 
the  systematizing  and  organizing  of  our  vast  information, 
then  rationalism  will  no  doubt  become  again  a  powerful 
tendency.  If  I  mistake  not,  we  see  such  a  tendency  in 
mathematics  to-day.  Regarding  subjectivism  my  own 
conviction  is  that  Cartesian  dualism  and  the  subjectivisms 
that  are  its  outgrowth  are  becoming  a  greater  and  greater 
embarrassment  both  to  science  in  general  and  to  psychol- 
ogy in  particular.  If  this  is  true,  the  twentieth  century 
may  solve  a  philosophical  problem  that  has  embarrassed 
science  since  the  days  of  Democritus. 

4.  The  individual  and  the  group  mind. — The  great 
lesson  that  general  history  and  the  history  of  philosophy 
are  to-day  teaching  is  that  culture  is  the  product  of  both 
the  individual  and  the  group  mind.  We  inherit  from  the 
group  our  philosophy  as  we  inherit  our  laws  or  our  social 
conventions  and  only  gradually  does  the  exceptional  in- 
dividual emancipate  himself  from  the  dogmatic  bhndness 
of  the  mob.  But  even  this  power  to  emancipate  himself 
must  come  from  his  environment.  It  must  come  from 
great  economic  and  social  changes,  from  great  discoveries 
of  new  truths,  or  from  an  envirpnment  that  encourages 
individuahsm  and  individual  variation.    Whether  or  not 


432      THE  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  true  spirit  of  freedom  and  respect  for  individualism 
will  continue  to  increase,  is  more  difficult  to  judge.  Per- 
haps our  modern  democratic  tendencies  conceal  a  great 
danger,  the  mob  mind  and  its  mediocrity.  Will  democracy 
be  wise  enough  to  value  the  true  freedom  of  the  excep- 
tional individual,  the  freedom  of  the  great  thinker?  Can 
she  be  taught  what  she  owes  to  these  men  in  past  genera- 
tions? Can  she  learn  who  gave  her  the  civilization  she 
possesses? 

However,  the  group  mind  has  also  its  virtue.  The  in- 
dividual is  Uable  to  be  one-sided,  the  group  is  many-sided. 
Life  is  extremely  complex  and  its  complex  problems  re- 
quire complex  solutions.  The  tendency  of  the  individual 
is  to  oversimpUfy  these  problems  and  to  offer  simple  and 
unworkable  solutions.  Tradition  and  instinct  are  therefore 
often  wiser  than  man's  intellect.  Thus  whatever  be  the 
philosophy  of  the  decades  to  come  it  should  be  many- 
sided  and  complex;  and  no  doubt  the  group  will  in- 
sist upon  this  condition  with  or  against  the  individual 
thinker. 

5.  The  two  aspects  of  man's  intellectual  progress.— 
History  as  the  story  of  the  progress  of  man  has  two 
aspects.  First,  progress  is  the  reorganization  of  man's  in- 
stinctive nature  so  that  it  is  better  adjusted  to  the  environ- 
ment taken  as  a  constant.  Second,  progress  is  the  remodel- 
ling of  man's  environment  so  that  it  enables  man  to  satisfy 
better  his  total  inborn  nature  taken  in  turn  as  a  constant. 
Intellectual  progress  as  a  human  enterprise  has  two  sim- 
ilar aspects.  First,  intellectual  progress  is  the  thinking 
through  what  we  already  know  so  that  we  know  it  better, 
more  consistently  and  more  profoundly.  Second,  intel- 
lectual progress  is  an  ever  increasing  body  of  information 
that  is  undoing  the  thought  of  the  older  generations  and 
calling  for  new  explanations  and  new  philosophical  foun- 
dations.   Our  modern  pragmatism  has  taught  us  not  to 


CONCLUSION  433 

expect  finality,  and  nothing  in  the  spirit  of  our  age  or  in 
its  complex  philosophical  thought  suggests  that  a  final 
philosophy  is  near  at  hand.  Rather  our  spirit  of  adventure 
and  our  experimentalism  make  us  pleased  to  believe  that 
the  goal  of  history  is  still  far,  far  away. 


INDEX 


Abelard,  272 

Analysis,  the  increase  of  this 
ability  as  a  result  of  growing 
civilization,  23f. 

Anatomical  science,  its  origin 
and  development  in  Greece, 
87,  116,  158 

Animism,  and  immortality,  133; 
and  science,  lOOf.;  and  the 
world-soul,  147ff.;  as  part  of 
popular  philosophy,  44;  in 
medieval  thought,  251;  in 
modem  psychology,  332,  400; 
its  definition,  41f.;  its  origin, 
41ff. 

Ansehn,  272 

Apollonius,  181 

Apologists,  Christian,  226 

Archimedes,  181 

Aristarchus,  180 

Aristotle,  150ff.,  180;  and  medi- 
eval philosophy,  260ff.;  and 
Platonism,  151ff. 

Arius,  225 

Associationism,  329,  333f. 

Astronomy,  in  modern  age, 
286ff . ;  origin  and  development 
in  Greece,  84f .,  116, 142, 158fF., 
179f. 

Athanasius,  225 

Atomic  theory,  its  cosmology, 
104f.;  its  origin  and  develop- 
ment in  Greece,  88ff.,  95ff.; 
its  philosophical  significance, 
105ff.;    its    principles,    102ff. 


Augustine,  Saint,  233ff.,  309, 
327 

Bacon,    Francis,    307;   and   the 
experimental    method,    314£f. 
Bergson,  379f. 
Berkeley,  309f.,  312,  349flf. 

Christian  philosophy,  189flf., 
223ff.;  and  modern  rational- 
ism, 323ff.;  its  relation  to 
Greek  thought,  188ff.,  228ff., 
231ff. 

Christianity,  223ff.;  in  middle 
ages,  250ff. 

Civilization,  causes  of  rise  and 
growth  of,  2ff.;  causes  of  the 
slowness  of  progress  in  prim- 
itive, 6f.;  its  recency,  1;  prim- 
itive beliefs  and  customs  the 
source  of  later,  7flF. 

Copernicus,  288f . 

Curiosity,  its  broadening  as  the 
result  of  civilization,  22f . 

Darwin,  311,  362ff. 
Decadence,  in  Greece,  164ff.;  ita 

nature,  165f. 
Deism,  325f. 
Democritus,    124ff.,    195f.;    and 

modem    thought,    310f.,    346 
Descartes,  294,   309,  312,   322, 

328,  346,  348;  and  rationalism, 

317ff. 
Diaphantus,  181 
Discovery,  Age  of,  275£f. 


435 


436 


INDEX 


Dualism,  Cartesian,  330,  342, 
410£f. 

Eleaticism,  its  origin  and  devel- 
opment in  Greece,  93,  98f., 
137f.,  145f. 

Emotions,  effect  of  civilization 
upon  man's,  24f. 

Empiricism,  see  Positivism 

Enlightenment,  period  of,  llOff.; 
in  Greece,  llOff.;  in  modern 
age,  308ff.,  337ff. 

Environment,  its  influence  upon 
man's  civilization,  3f. 

Epicureanism,  186f.,  192ff. 

Epicurus,  192 

Ethics,  in  Greece,  118,  129ff., 
137ff.,  160ff.,  192ff.;  in  middle 
ages,  270;  in  modern  age, 
334f.,  357f.,  366ff.,  370ff., 
402ff.,  421ff. 

Euclid,  142,  181 

Evolution,  doctrine  of,  312, 
356ff. 

Experimentalism,  401f . 

Fichte,  309,  370f. 

Forms,  doctrine  of,  91,  134ff., 
143ff.,  154ff. 

Freedom  of  thought,  and  mod- 
em rationalism  and  natural- 
ism, 336;  at  present  time, 
427f.;  influence  of  civiUzation 
in  increasing,  27f. 

Galilei,  289f.;  and  the  experi- 
mental method,  314f. 

Geography,  in  modern  age, 
283ff . ;  origin  and  development 
in  Greece,  85,  178f. 

Geology,  and  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  361f. 

Gnosticism,  229f. 

Godwin,  307f. 


Gorgias,  124 

Greece,  its  golden  age,  68f.;  the 
originator  of  science,  60ff., 
67fi^.,  84ff. 

Greek  philosophy,  Athenian 
period  of,  109ff.;  contrasted 
with  modern,  246ff.;  early 
period  of,  78ff.;  its  periods, 
69f.,  78f.;  its  relation  to 
Greek  reUgion,  74ff.,  78f.;  its 
two  currents,  75f. 

Greek  rehgion,  7 Iff.;  its  in- 
fluence upon  Greek  philos- 
ophy, 73ff.,  78f. 

Gregory,  236f. 

Group  mind,  and  animism,  43; 
and  the  individual,  431f.;  its 
influence  upon  custom  and 
thought,   16f.,  25ff.,  35,   46f. 

Harmony,    the   pre-estabUshed, 

331 
Hartley,  333 
Harvey,  294,  328 
Hegel,  309,  355,  375ff. 
Hellenistic  period,  164ff. 
Hellenistic    philosophy,     173ff., 

185ff. 
Hellenistic  rehgion,  167ff. 
Heracleitus,  95ff.,  200f. 
Hipparchus,  181 
Hippocrates,  116f.,  183 
History,  its  major  periods,  59f. 
Hobbes,  322,  328,  333 
Hume,  333,  349ff. 
Huyghens,  290,  294 

Idealism,  312,  345f.;  objective, 

353ff. 
Ideas,    doctrine   of,    see   Forms 
Imitation,  influence  of  civiliza- 
tion upon  this  form  of  learn- 
ing, 21f. 


INDEX 


437 


Inductive  method,  see  Method, 

the  experimental 
Intellectualism,  modem,   304ff., 

402ff. 
Ionic    philosophy    and    science, 

and  Greek  religion,  74flf.;  in 

the  early  period,  88ff. 

John  of  Salisbury,  258f , 
Joule,  294 

Kant,  291,  309,  312,  349ff.,  370f. 

Kepler,  290 

Knowledge,  as  a  result  of  trial 
and  error  learning,  32f.;  spec- 
ulative, 33ff.;  the  history  of 
its  growth,  12f. 

Knowledge,  theory  of;  and  the 
new  realism,  409fif.,  in  the 
modern  age,  350ff. 

Laplace,  290f.,  322 
Leeuwenhoek,  294 
Leucippus,  100,  102 
Locke,  307,  312,  333,  346,  348, 

350ff. 
Logic,  origin  and  development  in 

Greece  of,  86,  93,  112f.,  143ff., 

153f. 
LyeU,  362£f. 

Mach,  406 

Magic,   its  definition,   39f.;  its 

origin,    40;    its    survival    in 

civilization,   7ff.;   the  part  it 

plays     in     human     life     and 

thought,  39f. 
Man,   his   prehistory,    Iflf.;   the 

influence  of  the  exceptional, 

4ff. 
Manichaeism,  230,  234f. 
Man's  mental  nature,   changes 

wrought    by    civilization    in, 

20ff. 


Marx,  424f. 

Materialism,  in  modem  thought, 

332 
Mathematics,    and    philosophy, 

146f.;  in  modem  age,  292f.; 

in  nineteenth  century,  391f.; 

its  origin  and  development  in 

Greece,  86f.,  116,  142f.,  181f. 
Medical     science,     origin     and 

development  in  Greece  of,  92, 

116f.,  182f. 
Medieval  philosophy,  261ff. 
Medieval    thought,    factors    in, 

252ff.;  its  development,  244fif., 

250ff. 
Method,  the  experimental,  314f.; 

and    modern    science,    319f., 

401f. 
Method,  the  problem  of  scien- 
tific, 314ff. 
Mithraism,  230 
Mysticism,  see  Romanticism 
Myth,  its  nature  and  origin,  44f . 

Natural  selection,   doctrine  of, 

364ff. 
Naturalism,  in  modem  thought, 

3216".,  398fi^. 
Nature,  in  contrast  to  custom, 

113f.;  law  of,  176,  199,  218ff.; 

the  notion,  88 
Neoplatonism,      188f.,      201ff., 

237ff.;  and  Christianity,  231flf. 

and  St.  Augustine,  233ff.;  in 

middle  ages,  259 
Newton,  290,  294,  322 
Nominalism,  268ff. 

Occasionalism,  330f . 
Ostwald,  406 

Parallelism,  331f. 

Parmenides,    86,    90,    98f.,    145 


438 


INDEX 


Paul,  Saint,  224f. 

Pearson,  K.,  406 

Petrarch,  281 

Phenomenalism,  125ff.,  312, 
341fT.;  influence  in  past  two 
centuries,  356ff. 

Philolaus,  133 

Philosophy,  a  group  phenom- 
enon, 17f.;  defined,  14ff.;  its 
history,  12ff.,  59ff.,  432f.;  the 
causes  of  its  growth,  16ff., 
432f. 

Physical  science,  in  Greece,  95ff., 
158ff.;  in  modern  age,  293ff.; 
in  nineteenth  century,  392ff. 

Physiology,  and  modem  ra- 
tionalism, 328f.;  in  Greece,  87, 
116;  in  modem  age,  294;  in 
nineteenth  century,  394£f. 

Plato,  139ff. 

Platonic  realism,  147;  in  medie- 
val thought,  263ff. 

Plotinus,  206ff. 

Poincar6,  406 

Political  and  social  science,  and 
modern  rationalism,  334f.;  in 
Greece,  113f.;  in  modern  age, 
296ff.;  in  nineteenth  century, 
397,  425f. 

Positivism,  312,  342ff.,  350ff.; 
influence  in  past  two  cen- 
turies, 356ff. 

Pragmatism,  120ff.;  in  present 
thought,  402ff. 

Prehistory,  its  great  length.  Iff.; 
its  survival  within  civiliza- 
tion, 9ff.,  12f. 

Present  philosophical  tendencies, 
384ff.,  429ff. 

Primitive  civilization,  its  sur- 
vival within  later  civilization, 
9ff.,  12f.;  the  source  of  later 
civilization,  7ff.,  60ff. 


Primitive  knowledge  and 
thought,  and  religion,  49ff., 
164ff.;  their  relation  to  science, 
36ff.,  49ff.,  78f.;  their  survival 
in  modem  age,  302ff.;  their 
definition,  31ff.;  their  three 
levels,  32ff. 

Protagoras,  121ff. 

Psychology,  and  modem  ra- 
tionalism, 329ff . ;  and  phenom- 
enalism, 356f.;  and  the  new 
realism,  409ff.;  in  modem  age, 
296f.;  in  nineteenth  century, 
396f.;  in  the  Athenian  period, 
117 

Ptolemy,  179,  181 

Pythagoreanism,  86f.,  90ff., 
173ff.;  and  Neoplatonism, 
202f.;  and  Orphic  religion, 
74ff.,  91ff.;  and  Plato,  142; 
and  Socrates,  132ff. 

Rationalism,  314ff.;  in  modem 
thought,  323ff.,  401f. 

Realism,  medieval,  263ff. 

Realism,  the  new,  409ff. 

Religion,  and  modem  rational- 
ism and  naturalism,  323ff.; 
Hellenistic,  167ff.,  188ff.;  its 
definition,  49f.;  its  evolution, 
50ff.;  its  relation  to  and  in- 
fluence upon  science,  54ff. 

Renascence,  the  classical,  280ff.; 
see  Discovery,  Age  of 

Roman  law,  21  Iff.;  and  law  of 
nature,  218ff.;  in  middle  ages, 
253,  259,  262,  282f. 

Romanticism,  in  middle  ages, 
252,  272f.;  in  modem  age, 
304ff.,  369ff.;  throughout 
European  history,  76f. 

Rome,  and  Hellenism,  21  If. 

Rousseau,  307,  370 


INDEX 


439 


Schopenhauer,  309,  372f. 

Science,  and  philosophy,  14ff.; 
and  primitive  thought,  7flf., 
36ff.,  54ff.,  299f.;  and  reU- 
gion,  54flf.;  in  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, 387ff.;  its  origin,  60£f.; 
its    two   major   periods,    63f. 

Socialism,  420ff. 

Socialization,  influence  of  civili- 
zation upon,  28 

Socrates,  132flF. 

Sophists,  11  If. 

Speculation,  its  definition,  33ff. 

Spinoza,  322,  331 

Stoicism,  186f.,  197ff. 


Suggestion,  influence  of  civiliza- 
tion in  decreasing,  25f. 

Teleology,  and  modem  rational- 
ism and  naturalism,  323f. 
TyrreU,  G.,  380f. 

Vitalism,  as  a  present  tendency, 
400;  in  Aristotle's  philosophy, 
154ff. 

Voltaire,  308 

Will,  its  primacy,  269f . 
Zeno,  the  stoic,  197 


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vocabulary,  to  be  altogether  intelligible  to  the  uninitiated.  But 
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This  book  gives  the  standpoint  and  significance  of  each 
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The  author  has  included  an  account  of  some  German 
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Scottish  thinkers  than  is  usually  assigned  to  them  in 
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"A  history  of  philosophy  from  the  beginning  to  the 
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